T'  :...'"•}  I   !  !    I! 


SOME  Of  THE 

JBJHl 

»  t  f*i  f 

M<U 


JOSEPH  DIE1ZGKN 


/7  •     

tf  /^^r^*-^ 


SOME  OF   THE 


PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 


ON 


Socialism   and   Science,    Religion,    Ethics, 

Critique-of-Reason  and  the 

World-at-large. 


BY 
JOSEPH  DIETZGEN. 

TRANSLATED  £Y  M.   BEER  AND   TH.   ROTHSTEIN 


WITH    A   BIOGP>PHICAL   SKETCH    AND    SOME   INTRODUCTORY   REMARKS  BY 
EUGENE    ^'ETZGEN  :      TRANSLATED    BY    ERNEST     UNTERMANN 


-'^f.JI  BY  EUQKNK  DlETZGSN  AND  JOSEPH  DlKTZOEN,   Jl!. 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
Iqo6 


e 


COPYRIGHT    1906 
By    EUGENE   DIETZGEN 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

JOSEPH    DIETZGEN  :    A    SKETCH    OF   His    LIFE    BY    EUGENE 

DlETZGEN 7 

AN  ILLUSTRATION  OF  THE  PROLETARIAN  METHOD  OF  RESEARCH 
AND   CONCEPTION    OF   THE   WORLD  :    MAX    STIRNER   AND 

JOSEPH  DIETZGEN.    BY  EUGENE  DIETZGEN 35 

SCIENTIFIC    SOCIALISM 79 

THE  RELIGION  OF  SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY 90 

ETHICS  OF  SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY 155 

SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY 173 

THE  LIMITS  OF  COGNITION 224 

OUR  PROFESSORS  ON  THE  LIMITS  OF  COGNITION 236 

THE  INCONCEIVABLE:  A  SPECIAL  CHAPTER  IN  SOCIAL-DEMO- 
CRATIC  PHILOSOPHY 254 

EXCURSIONS  OF  A  SOCIALIST  INTO  THE  DOMAIN  OF  EPISTEMOLOGY 

Preface 263 

I. "  The    Innermost    of    Nature    No    Created    Mind    Can 

Enter"        266 

II.     The  Absolute   Truth   and   Its   Natural   Manifestations  278 

III.  Materialism  T'ersus  Materialism 291 

IV.  Darwin  and  Hegel 314 

V.    The  Light  of  Cognition 342 


JOSEPH  DIETZGEN 

A  SKETCH   OF  HIS  LIFE  BY  EUGENE  DIETZGEN  l 

My  father,  Joseph  Dietzgen,  was  born  in  Blankenberg, 
near  Cologne,  Germany,  on  December  9,  1828.  The 
place  is  a  former  stronghold  of  a  robber  baron,  ro- 
mantically situated.  A  part  of  the  walls  and  four  massive 
ruins  of  towers  of  the  old  stronghold  still  lend  a  pic- 
turesque character  to  the  landscape,  the  effect  being 
heightened  by  the  location  of  Blankenberg  high  upon  a 
mountain  covered  with  woods  and  vineyards,  at  the  foot 
of  which  the  Sieg,  a  charming  tributary  of  the  Rhine, 
winds  its  way. 

My  grandfather,  who  was  a  well-to-do  master  tanner 
and  a  genuine  little  bourgeois,  transferred  his  tannery, 
about  the  year  1835,  to  the  nearby  village  of  Uckerath, 
a  place  of  about  four  hundred  inhabitants.  It  owed  its 
relatively  busy  life  to  the  fact  that  it  was  a  relay  station 
on  the  postal  route  between  Francfort  and  Cologne,  which 
was  then  much  frequented. 

My  father  was  the  eldest  of  three  brothers  and  two 
sisters  and  resembled  more  than  any  of  them  his  mother, 
a  woman  of  high  endowment,  who  at  the  age  of  74  still 
attracted  attention  by  her  beautiful  and  stalwart  ap- 
pearance. The  Dietzgen's  were  one  of  the  oldest  fam- 
ilies in  the  valley  of  the  Sieg,  and  the  chronicle  of  the 
county  seat  Siegburg  mentions  some  Dietzgen's  in  the 

1 A    revised    and    completed    reproduction    of    an    article    in    "  Die    Neue 
Zeit,"     1894-95,    Vol.    II. 

7 


8  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

capacity  of  civil  councillors  and  master  tradesmen  as  far 
back  as  1674. 

My  father  went  to  the  public  school  in  Uckerath,  and 
later  on  for  a  short  time  to  the  high  school  in  Cologne. 
He  is  described  as  being,  up  to  his  fifteenth  year,  an 
exceptionally  bright  boy,  always  up  to  some  pranks  and 
giving  much  trouble  by  his  high  spirits  to  the  pastor, 
the  mayor,  and  other  prominent  citizens  of  Uckerath  and 
its  neighborhood.  For  this  reason,  my  grandfather  sent 
him  for  a  short  while  away  from  Uckerath  to  the  Latin 
school  of  a  very  strict  disciplinarian  pastor  in  the  village 
of  Oberpleis. 

However,  his  years  of  adolescence  and  the  awakening 
of  love's  longing  made  a  thoughtful  young  man  of  him, 
who  in  the  hours  of  recreation  from  tanning  in  grand- 
father's shop  assiduously  studied  literature,  political 
economy,  and  philosophy.  He  derived  some  inspiration 
from  the  companionship  of  a  playmate  of  his  childhood 
who  attended  the  university  at  Bonn. 

In  those  days,  1845-1849,  in  the  shop,  where  a  book 
was  generally  found  open  by  the  side  of  his  work,  he 
also  learned  to  read  French  fluently  without  a  teacher 
and  to  speak  it  so  well  that  in  1871,  when  French  prison- 
ers of  war  were  quartered  in  the  town  of  Siegburg  where 
we  lived  at  that  time,  he  was  able  to  converse  with  them, 
while  to  my  surprise  the  teachers  of  French  in  the 
preparatory  college  could  not  do  so.  A  small  number 
of  poems  of  my  father,  dating  from  his  period  of  adoles- 
cence, 1847-1851,  were  found  among  the  papers  left  by 
him.  I  reproduce  two  of  them  herewith: 

THE  PROLETARIAN. 

By  chains  of  poverty  my  life  is  bound, 
And  superstition's  mists  obscure  my  brain. 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH    DIETZGEN 

The  curse  of  toil,  the  never-ending  strain, 
Oppresses  me  and  weighs  me  to  the  ground. 

Made  in  a  mould  divine,  yet  I  was  found 
Amid  the  filthy  garbage  of  a  drain, 
The  offspring  of  the  outcast  and  profane, 

Doomed  to  the  level  of  a  soulless  hound. 

A  vagabond !     Sufficient  for  my  kind 

The  beggar's  meal,  doled  out  from  day  to  day 
With  drops  of  hollow  faith  to  ease  my  mind. 

Bear  I  my  cross  until  this  mortal  clay 
Shall  totter  to  its  grave?    Where  will  you  find 
My  soul?    Where  Satan  holds  eternal  swayi 

HARD  TIMES. 

Little   woman,   little  song, 
Oh,  I  love  you,  love  you  long. 

— Fr.  v.  Schlegd 

In  my  good  young  days  of  gladness, 

When  I  felt  my  nature  thrilling 
With  creation's  sweetest  madness, 

Maidens  fair  were  always  willing, 
And  there  was  no  room  for  sadness. 

In  my  happy  exultation, 
And  'mid  kisses,  songs,  and  dances, 

I  defied  with  animation 
Care's  and  worry's  darkest  glances. 

Woe  is  me !    The  tide  has  turned ! 

Times  have  changed.     Now  frank  devotion, 

Tender  glances,  sweet  embraces, 
Conjure  up   the  marriage  notion, 

Altar,  wedding-ring,  and  laces, 
And  a  family  commotion. 

Sadly   do   I   face  the  question: 
Why   is   love   abomination, 

Why  a  shame  the  sex  suggestion, 


IO  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

Unless  bless'd  by  rank  and  station? 
Woe  is  me!     The  tide  has  turned  1 

Pretty   maiden,   bright  and  bonnie, 

Winsome,  charming,  blithe  and  rosy! 
If  I  only  had  the  money 

For  a  homestead  snug  and  cosy, 
You  would  be  my  bride,  my  honey! 

But,  alas !  though  Cupid's  craving 
Is  as  wild  and  strong  as  ever, 

Yet  in  vain  is  all  my  raving. 
Never  shall  I  hold  you,  never! 

Woe  is  me!    The  tide  has  turned! 

At  an  early  stage  of  his  development,  my  father  felt 
attracted  toward  Socialism  —  aside  from  the  lessons 
taught  by  the  times  and  conditions  in  which  he  lived  — 
by  the  study  of  the  French  economists;  the  Communist 
Manifesto  of  Marx  and  Engels  made  a  class-conscious 
socialist  out  of  him  in  1848. 

;He  tried  his  hand  at  the  trade  of  a  "  preacher  of  dis- 
content "  in  the  "  mad "  year  1848,  by  addressing  the 
peasants  from  a  chair  standing  in  the  main  street  of  the 
village. 

In  June,  1849,  tne  reaction  drove  him  to  America,  at 
the  age  of  21.  There  he  worked  for  two  years  as 
journeyman  tanner,  painter  and  teacher,  but  only  at 
intervals,  spending  most  of  his  time  as  a  so-called  tramp 
without  means,  and  walking,  or  riding  on  canal  boats, 
over  a  large  part  of  the  United  States,  from  Wisconsin 
in  the  North  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  in  the  South,  and 
from  the  Hudson  in  the  East  to  the  Mississippi  in  the 
West.  Apart  from  acquiring  the  English  language,  he 
regarded  as  the  best  result  of  these  travels,  as  he  wrote 
to  me  to  New  York  in  1882,  "  the  feeling  of  having  be- 
come acquainted  with  a  land  and  with  conditions,  where 


LIFE   OF  JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  II 

one  can  make  light  of  the  pressing  care  for  the  daily 
bread  which  weighs  upon  one  so  hard  in  Germany." 

In  December,  1851,  we  again  find  him  at  work  in 
grandfather's  shop  at  Uckerath,  and  two  years  later  he 
married  a  devoutly  religious  orphan  from  the  little  country 
town  of  Drolshagen  in  Westphalia.  Her  goodness  of 
heart  and  love  of  life  cheered  him,  until  her  death  in  1877 
made  him  a  widower. 

In  spite  of  their  utterly  different  mental  propensities  — 
my  mother  having  the  prejudiced  bourgeois  mind  and 
being  a  devout  Catholic,  while  my  father  was  a  thorough- 
going naturalist  and  proud  of  his  proletarian  convictions 
—  they  lived  in  rare  harmony. 

It  is  significant  for  the  relations  of  my  parents  that 
even  after  twenty-one  years  of  union  with  my  father, 
my  mother  urged  me  on  the  occasion  of  my  first  com- 
munion, which  seemed  to  her  an  especially  opportune 
moment,  to  send  the  fervent  prayer  to  God  that  he  might 
convert  my  father  and  lead  him  back  into  the  embrace 
of  the  alone-saving  church.  Although  this  prayer  re- 
mained unfulfilled,  my  father  nevertheless  occupied  the 
place  next  to  God  in  the  devotion  of  my  mother  through- 
out all  her  life. 

Shortly  after  his  marriage,  my  father  opened  a  grocery 
store,  a  bakery,  and  a  tannery  combined  in  the  nearby 
Winterscheid,  much  after  the  manner  of  the  enterprising 
Americans.  He  was  so  successful  in  his  business  that  he 
soon  opened  a  branch  store  in  the  village  of  Ruppichte- 
roth.  But  as  was  his  custom  in  Uckerath,  so  also  in 
Winterscheid  and  in  his  later  enterprises  my  father  de- 
voted only  half  of  the  day  to  material  gain,  while  the 
rest  of  his  time  was  spent  in  diligent  study,  from  pure 
thirst  of  knowledge  and  without  other  incentive. 

In  order  to  secure  economic  independence  for  himself 


12  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

and  to  be  enabled  to  devote  himself  entirely  to  science  at 
an  earlier  date  than  would  have  been  possible  by  the  help 
of  his  country  store,  he  again  emigrated  in  1859  to  the 
United  States,  where  he  tried  to  establish  a  larger  busi- 
ness in  the  South.  But  the  Civil  War  breaking  out  soon 
after  that,  his  business  in  Montgomery,  Alabama,  came 
to  an  end.  One  morning  he  found  some  of  his  friends 
strung  up  in  front  of  their  houses,  because  their  sympathy 
for  the  North  had  become  inconvenient  to  their  neighbors. 
He  left  Alabama  in  1861  and  returned  to  the  Rhine, 
where  he  took  charge  of  grandfather's  tannery  which  he 
operated,  as  the  grandfather  had  donez  with  the  occa- 
sional help  of  a  day  laborer. 

It  happened  one  day  that  his  eldest  sister  called  his 
attention  to  an  advertisement  in  the  "  Kolnische  Zeitung," 
in  which  a  man  familiar  with  advanced  methods  of  tan- 
ning was  wanted  for  a  large  government  tannery  in  St. 
Petersburg,  Russia.  My  father  applied  for  this  position, 
and  in  the  spring  of  1864  the  Russian  counsellor  of  state, 
Goureaux,  visited  him  in  Uckerath  and  engaged  him  at  a 
high  salary.  In  a  few  years,  my  father  succeeded  in 
increasing  the  productivity  of  the  establishment  fivefold, 
by  the  introduction  of  improved  machinery  and  methods. 
But  in  1869  he  was  back  once  more  in  the  Rhineland, 
this  time  at  Siegburg,  where  he  had  inherited  a  tannery 
from  one  of  his  uncles.  It  was  this  inheritance,  together 
with  his  desire  for  greater  independence,  and  the  political 
conditions  of  Russia,  that  induced  him  to  leave  St.  Peters- 
burg. The  administration  regretted  his  departure  and 
promised  to  continue  his  salary,  if  he  would  inspect  the 
factory  for  a  few  months  every  year.  My  father  visited 
St.  Petersburg  several  times  for  this  purpose,  but  later 
the  administration  decided  to  dispense  with  his  costly 
services. 


LIFE  OF  JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  13 

iDuring  his  sojourn  in  Russia,  my  father  wrote  his 
first  work:  The  Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work,  dis- 
cussed by  a  workingman.  A  rene^ved  critique  of  pure 
and  practical  reason.  This  critique  of  reason  first  ap- 
peared in  1869,  published  by  Otto  Meissner  in  Hamburg. 
It  contains  for  the  careful  reader,  among  other  things,  an 
epistemological  confirmation  and  explanation  of  the  con- 
sistency of  the  materialist  conception  of  history,  on  the 
basis  of  the  monist-naturalist  theory  of  understanding; 
furthermore,  the  beginning  of  a  dialectics  developed  be- 
yond Hegel  and  his  successors,  Feuerbach,  Marx  and 
Engels. 

However,  Joseph  Dietzgen  formulated  his  discovery 
of  a  dialectics  expanded  into  a  cosmic-monistic  philosophy 
more  clearly  and  usefully  in  his  "  Positive  Outcome  of 
Philosophy  "  which  appeared  in  1894.  In  this  work  his 
dialectics  is  more  definitely  and  perfectly  elaborated,  not 
only  as  the  "  science  of  the  general  movement  and  de- 
velopment of  nature,  of  human  society,  and  of  thought " 
(Engels),  not  only  as  the  science  of  the  eternally  change- 
able diffusion  of  things,  the  individual  connections  of 
which  must  be  studied,  but  also  as  the  science  of  the 
infinitely  constant  and  uniform  interrelation  of  all  things 
in  the  universe.  It  was  only  by  means  of  this  perfection 
that  dialectics  could  grow  into  a  consistent  monism,  a 
uniform  world  philosophy.  From  this  moment  dates  the 
discovery  of  a  cosmic-dialectic  method  of  thought  which 
guarantees  a  strictly  systematic  and  logical  uniformity  in 
the  theory  of  all  studies,  no  matter  how  wide  and  irrecon- 
cilable may  seem  the  contradiction  of  the  questions 
treated.  This  is  the  only  method  of  research  which  ex- 
terminates dualism  and  superstition  in  all  fields  of  studies, 
and  clears  the  road  for  every  science  to  its  very  last 
conclusions  where  each  science  merges  into  the  universal 


14  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

interrelation  of  nature.  These  words  may  here  suffice 
to  indicate  the  principal  accomplishment  of  Joseph 
Dietzgen. 

In  St.  Petersburg,  he  also  wrote  his  articles  on  "  Cap- 
ital," by  Karl  Marx,  which  appeared  in  the  "  Demo- 
kratische  Wochenblatt,"  at  Leipzig,  in  1868,  which  paper 
was  the  precursor  of  the  "  Volksstaat "  and  the  present 
Berlin  "  Vowarts." 

Karl  Marx  makes  a  highly  commendatory  reference  to 
the  economic  understanding  of  my  father  in  the  preface 
of  the  second  edition  of  the  first  volume  of  "  Capital." 
He  also  visited  my  father  in  Siegburg. 

At  this  point  I  must  remember  another  friend  of  my 
father's,  who  deeply  influenced  his  mental  development. 
This  is  Ludwig  Feuerbach,  with  whom  my  father  enter- 
tained a  correspondence.  When  in  1871  the  news  of  the 
poverty  and  death  of  this  philosopher  reached  my  father, 
I  remember  seeing  him  cry  for  the  first  time. 

His  small  tannery  in  Siegburg  permitted  him  to  study 
with  little  interruption,  since  he  did  not  care  to  accumu- 
late material  wealth,  his  Siegburg  heirloom  guaranteeing 
in  a  modest  way  the  necessities  of  life  for  himself  and 
family,  so  long  as  it  was  kept  together.  That  he  did  not 
succeed  in  keeping  this  heirloom  intact,  was  a  cause  of 
much  subsequent  trouble  to  my  father.  There  were  al- 
ways a  great  number  of  friends  who  needed  assistance 
that  injured  him.  In  one  case  he  went  to  Denmark  in 
order  to  assist  a  comrade  financially  in  his  tanning  busi- 
ness. But  the  attempt  failed,  with  great  loss  to  himself. 
At  the  same  time,  his  leather  store  and  tannery  in  Sieg- 
burg were  less  and  less  able  to  compete  with  the  growing 
great  capitalist  industries  and  to  yield  profits.  Finally 
his  last  customers  were  almost  wholly  lost  when  he  was 
taken  into  custody  for  three  months,  pending  his  trial 


LIFE   OF  JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  1$ 

in  Cologne,  in  1878.  This  arrest  was  made  under  the 
influence  of  the  momentary  excitement  which  had  seized 
the  German  authorities  after  the  attempt  of  Hodel  and 
Nobiling,  in  1878,  to  kill  the  German  emperor.  The  di- 
rect cause  of  his  arrest  was  a  speech  on  "  The  Future  of 
the  Social-Democracy  "  which  he  had  delivered  in  Co- 
logne. This  speech  appeared  in  print  in  Cologne  in  1878 
and  many  new  editions  of  it  are  being  used  up  to  the 
present  for  propaganda. 

During  his  stay  in  Siegburg  from  1869  to  1884,  my 
father  wrote  a  large  number  of  articles  on  economic  and 
philosophical  questions  for  the  "  Volksstaat,"  Leipzig, 
1870-1876;  "  Vorwarts,"  Leipzic,  1877;  "  Sozialdemo- 
krat,"  Zurich,  1880-1888;  "  Neue  Gesellschaft,"  Zurich; 
"  Neue  Zeit,"  Stuttgart ;  "  New  Yorker  Volkszeitung," 
New  York,  and  a  number  of  pamphlets.  I  am  familiar 
with  the  following :  "  The  Religion  of  Social-Democ- 
racy "  (five  sermons,  Leipzic),  "Bourgeois  Society," 
Leipzic ;  "  Thoughts  on  Political  Economy,"  Leipzic ; 
"  An  Open  Letter  to  Heinrich  von  Sybel,"  Leipzic ;  "  The 
Faith  of  the  Faithless,"  Solingen. 

At  the  international  congress  at  The  Hague,  in  1872,  to 
which  my  father  was  a  delegate,  Karl  Marx  introduced 
him  to  the  assembled  delegates  with  the  words :  "  Here 
is  our  philosopher." 

In  spite  of  his  reluctance,  due  to  his  lack  of  training 
and,  perhaps,  also  to  lack  of  talent  for  public  functions, 
he  was  induced  in  1881  to  accept  a  nomination  for  the 
Reichstag  in  the  county  of  Leipzic.  However,  he  was 
beaten  by  a  coalition  of  the  parties  of  "  law  and  order." 
In  1880,  when  his  Siegburg  business  had  been  undermined 
and  his  means  reduced  by  half  by  unfortunate  relatives 
and  friends,  he  suggested  to  me,  his  eldest  son,  after 
completing  my  studies  at  the  Siegburg  "  gymnasium,"  to 


l6  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

emigrate  to  the  United  States  and  to  become  the  path- 
finder for  the  existence  of  our  family.  After  luck  had 
favored  me  in  this  respect,  my  father  was  enabled  to 
devote  himself  in  peace  to  his  life's  work,  which  unfor- 
tunately was  cut  short  prematurely  when  he  had  just 
completed  his  "  Positive  Outcome  of  Philosophy." 

How  seriously  he  took  his  task,  may  be  inferred  from 
statements  made  before  his  death  and  from  the  following 
letter  to  me,  written  October  16,  1880: 

"  An  essential  part  of  myself,  the  existence  of  which 
you  may  have  suspected  intuitively,  but  which  you  cannot 
really  know,  because  we  have  never  spoken  of  it,  since 
you  were  too  young,  shall  now  be  revealed  to  you.  It 
will  enable  us  to  understand  one  another  still  better.  To 
come  to  the  point:  I  have  been  haunted  since  the  days 
of  my  youth  by  a  logical  problem,  viz.,  that  of  the  '  last 
questions  of  all  knowledge.'  It  presses  on  my  brain 
like  a  stone.  Whenever  in  the  course  of  past  years  the 
cares  of  providing  for  the  necessities  of  life  were  urgent, 
I  might  forget  about  it  for  a  few  years.  But  as  soon 
as  matters  would  go  along  more  smoothly,  it  would  al- 
ways return,  ever  stronger  and  clearer,  until  finally  of 
recent  years  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  this  is 
the  work  of  my  life.  My  peace  of  mind  as  well  as  my 
moral  duty  demand  that  I  should  devote  myself  to  it 
and  accomplish  it.  If  I  had  been  aware  of  this  in  St. 
Petersburg  as  I  am  now,  we  might  still  be  there.  This 
is  the  reason  why  I  have  been  continuously  striving  to 
find  an  associate  who  would  help  me  to  carry  the  eco- 
nomic burden.  Hence  we  have  had  that  experience  in 
Denmark  and  Solingen  (he  had  made  an  unlucky  venture 
in  leather  also  in  Solingen),  and  for  the  same  reason  I 
cannot  carry  on  my  little  business  here  without  help. 
My  efforts  are  always  directed  toward  the  end  of  keeping 


LIFE  OF   JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  1 7 

my  brain  disengaged  from  business,  so  that  I  may  occupy 
myself  with  my  problem.  For  the  last  years  I  have 
had  a  hard  time  of  it,  for  this  problem  rises  with  me  and 
goes  to  bed  with  me,  and  the  material  cares  do  not  per- 
mit me  to  pay  much  attention  to  it.  Let  this  be  enough 
for  the  present.  I  cannot  say  much  about  the  subject 
itself,  until  you  have  become  more  mature.  J.  H.  von 
Kirchmann,  the  publisher  of  the  '  Philosophische  Biblio- 
thek,'  names  as  the  first  requisite  for  the  pursuit  of 
philosophy  a  life  rich  in  experience  and  events,  a  life 
that  has  seen  much,  tasted  every  happiness  and  every 
pain,  and  done  and  suffered  right  and  wrong. 

"  Now  I  want  to  impress  you  with  the  desirability  of 
genuine  culture.  Above  all,  do  not  forget,  while  in 
America,  that  one  should  do  business  for  the  sake  of 
life,  not  live  for  the  sake  of  business.  Never  be  harsh  in 
your  judgment  of  others,  but  make  allowance  for  their 
environment.  In  order  to  be  able  to  act  courteously,  you 
must  think  courteously.  Virtue  and  faults  are  always 
combined.  -Even  the  rascal  is  a  good  fellow,  and  '  the 
just  sins  seven  times  per  day.'  Now  enjoy  life  and  work 
bravely." 

The  private  letters  which  my  father  used  to  write  me 
regularly  every  week  or  two  from  the  time  of  my  emi- 
gration in  May  1880  up  to  his  third  landing  in  America 
in  June  1884,  I  have  collected  in  one  volume.  They 
may  interest  a  wider  circle,  not  only  on  account  of  the 
deep  insight  which  they  afford  of  the  soul-life  and  char- 
acter of  my  father,  but  also  on  account  of  the  wisdom 
of  life  and  invaluable  guides  for  the  development  of 
youno-  and  inexperienced  people  contained  in  them. 

My  father  wrote  two  series  of  letters  on  logic  during 
the  period  1880-1883.  But  only  that  dealing  with  a 
critique  of  the  theory  of  understanding  was  published 


l8  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

by  Dietz  in  Stuttgart  in  1895,  together  with  the  "  Posi- 
tive Outcome  of  Philosophy."  Of  the  series  dealing 
with  economics,  only  the  first  seven  letters  appeared  in 
print,  in  the  "  Sozialdemokrat "  (Zurich,  1883-84).  In 
reference  to  these  letters,  he  wrote  me  on  November  7, 
1883: 

"...  Sorge  will  be  more  interested  in  these  last 
three  letters  of  the  economic  series  than  in  the  first 
series  which  is  philosophical.  For  my  part,  I  think  more 
of  the  logical  than  the  economic  element,  since  what  I 
have  to  say  on  the  art  of  thinking  is,  so  to  speak,  my  own 
work  and  discovery,  while  I  received  my  understanding 
of  economics  ready  made  from  Marx." 

In  the  beginning  of  the  eighties,  my  father  was  fre- 
quently visited  by  a  number  of  students  of  the  university 
in  Bonn,  among  them  Dr.  Bruno  Wille,  who  published, 
in  the  April  number,  1896,  of  "  Der  Sozialistische  Aka- 
demiker"  (Berlin)  his  impressions  in  these  words: 

"  When  I  inquired  in  pleasant  Siegburg  for  the  home 
of  Dietzgen,  I  was  shown  a  little  house  covered  with 
vines  and  situated  in  the  middle  of  a  garden  on  the  bank 
of  a  creek.  Skins  soaking  in  water  and  the  smell  of 
oak  bark  indicated  the  presence  of  a  tannery.  A  pretty 
girl  of  tall  stature  showed  me  into  the  parlor  and  called 
her  father.  The  cozy  room  bore  evidences  of  the  literary 
inclinations  of  its  owner,  being  filled  with  books  which 
were  plainly  more  than  mere  articles  of  decoration. 
There  was  also  a  portrait  of  Beranger. 

"  Dietzgen  entered  and  saluted  me  cordially.  He  was 
a  man  of  giant  stature,  whose  strength  and  animation  did 
not  betray  his  54  years,  although  his  luxuriant  beard  was 
grey.  The  first  glance  at  his  noble  features  convinced 
me  that  here  was  a  man  of  genius.  His  large  fiery  eyes 
recalled  the  well-known  potraits  of  Goethe.  His  beauti- 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  19 

ful  forehead  bore  the  imprint  of  the  placid  serenity  of 
the  antique  philosophers.  His  manliness  was  combined 
with  a  loving  and  tender  mind.  His  cordial  sociability 
and  the  endearing  melodiousness  of  his  speech  announced 
the  best  type  of  the  Rhmelander.  His  voice  sounded 
metallic,  with  a  little  nasal  twang.  Dietzgen  came  direct 
from  his  work  in  the  shop,  and  he  was  not  in  the  least 
embarrassed  by  meeting  his  visitor  in  his  shirt  sleeves. 
Thus  he  was  an  ideal  illustration  of  the  title  of  his 
first  work,  '  The  Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work,  by  a 
working  man.' 

"  Dietzgen  made  ready  for  a  walk  with  me.  He 
abandoned  his  tannery  without  any  ado.  He  carried  it  on 
only  so  far  as  it  was  required  to  maintain  his  modest 
household.  This  philosopher  did  not  feel  inclined  to  be 
a  slave  of  work  for  gain.  I  discovered  by  his  very  first 
sentences  that  he  was  perfectly  at  home  in  the  regions  of 
higher  mental  life.  Not  a  trace  of  the  dust  of  the  shop 
was  on  his  soul.  No  professor  could  rise  from  his  desk 
more  spiritualized  than  this  tanner  did  from  his  manual 
labor.  In  a  few  minutes,  we  were  deeply  engaged  in  a 
discussion  of  philosophical  books  and  problems.  I  was 
surprised  at  Dietzgen's  expert  knowledge  and  general 
education,  which  was  calculated  to  put  to  shame  those 
conceited  intellectuals  who  look  down  with  disdain  on 
the  man  without  a  university  training.  This  philosoph- 
ical working  man  had  even  occupied  himself  with  antique 
literature,  and  with  better  success  than  is  generally  shown 
by  a  graduate  of  a  college,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
was  not  familiar  with  Greek  and  only  a  beginner  in 
Latin.  When  on  a  later  occasion  I  visited  him  with  a 
student  who  excelled  in  history,  Dietzgen  proved  himself 
qualified  to  discuss  with  the  greatest  understanding  a 
rather  obscure  special  question  of  history.  Such  evi- 


20  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

dences  of  knowledge  and  mental  superiority  were  given 
with  extreme  naturalness  and  simplicity,  in  which  there 
was  not  an  atom  of  that  boastfulness  which  I  have  not 
unfrequently  observed  in  self-educated  men.  Dietzgen 
was  far  too  objective  and  wise  to  pose. 

"  While  I  was  in  Bonn,  my  pilgrimages  to  Siegburg 
were  one  of  my  favorite  pastimes.  As  a  rule  I  brought 
with  me  some  books  from  the  library  of  the  university  for 
Dietzgen.  Sometimes  I  was  accompanied  by  my  student 
friends.  And  I  learned  to  love  the  workingman  phi- 
losopher more  and  more.  The  versatility,  strength  and 
freshness  of  his  talents  were  as  inspiring  as  the  oak  tree 
distinguished  by  the  luxuriance  of  its  trunk,  branches  and 
foliage.  Dietzgen  was  not  a  one-sidedly  abstract  and 
sober  nature.  His  finely  and  sharply  chiseled  mental  life 
was  imbued  with  a  certain  poetic  quality.  His  eye  spark- 
led when  resting  on  the  beauties  of  nature  during  our 
walks.  He  was  fond  of  poetry,  especially  of  lyrics,  which 
are  generally  neglected  by  inartistic  minds.  Once  he 
recited  for  me  a  translation  of  a  poem  by  Burns  which 
he  had  clad  in  well-rounded  German  verse.  If  I  am  not 
mistaken,  he  then  told  me  that  he  had  paraphrazed  sev- 
eral poems  by  Burns  and  Beranger.  His  mind  had  re- 
mained young  in  spite  of  his  years.  With  joyful  humor, 
fraternizing  and  freely  conversing  without  restraint,  he 
would  sit  ampng  us  young  and  frivolous  folk  drinking 
beer  or  punch.  But  he  always  held  aloof  from  the  trivial 
and  maintained  a  mental  level  which  compelled  the  re- 
spect of  even  the  most  forward.  Otherwise,  as  a  citizen 
of  Siegburg,  he  led  a  rather  lonely,  almost  hermit-like, 
existence.  The  bourgeois  were  not  to  his  liking.  More- 
over, they  had  a  certain  distrust  of  Socialism,  especially 
the  officials.  He  had  little  intercourse  with  comrades  of 
the  party,  though  there  were  quite  a  number  of  them  in 


LIFE  OF   JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  21 

nearby  Cologne.  He  seemed  to  feel  no  attraction  for  party 
life.  He  told  me  that  he  had  given  a  few  lectures  in  party 
meetings,  and,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  that  he  had  been 
nominated  for  the  Reichstag,  but  declared  that  he  was 
no  speaker  and  no  politician.  In  his  pleasant  way,  he 
related  his  experience  with  the  authorities.  Shortly  after 
Hodel's  attack  on  the  emperor,  he  accepted  an  invitation 
of  comrades  of  the  party  and  gave  a  lecture  on  '  The 
Future  of  the  Social-Democracy '  in  Cologne.  His  man- 
uscript was  published  in  pamphlet  form  under  the  same 
title.  In  his  own  words :  '  In  the  meantime  the  second 
attack,  that  of  Nobiling,  had  occurred,  whereupon  the 
uniformed,  decorated,  titled  and  official  world  of  Ger- 
many leaped  up  as  if  bitten  by  a  tarantula.  They  con- 
fiscated my  pamphlet,  handcuffed  me  to  another  vagabond, 
and  delivered  both  of  us  on  the  eve  of  Pentecost  to  the 
prison  of  Cologne.  After  keeping  me  there  for  two 
months,  they  dragged  me,  together  with  the  editor  of  the 
"  Neue  Freie  Presse  "  and  my  Friend  Kroger,  who  had 
committed  the  dangerous  crime  of  acting  as  agent  for 
my  pamphlet  —  I  don't  know  what  —  incited  class  against 
class,  desecrated  religion,  endangered  the  public  peace, 
etc.,  etc.  After  the  court  had  dismissed  us  without  any 
penalty  and  costs,  I  was  again  handcuffed  by  the 
gensd'armes  and  led  to  my  cell.  The  public  prosecutor 
had  appealed  the  case.  And  when  the  second  trial  once 
more  ended  in  my  acquittal,  the  obstinate  prosecutor 
appealed  again,  this  time  to  the  court  of  cassation  in 
Berlin,  where  the  author  and  his  pamphlet  were  at  last 
set  free.  A  few  days  after  that  the  anti-socialist  laws 
put  a  radical  end  to  all  freedom,  and  the  authorities 
gave  me  the  documentary  assurance  that  the  future  of  the 
Social-Democracy  was  forbidden.  Did  not  Xerxes  whip 
the  sea  when  it  was  rough?  Now  let  the  Prussians  go 


22  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

ahead  with  their  whipping.  The  Social-Democracy  will 
attend  to  its  own  future.'  " 

For  the  third  time,  my  father  emigrated  to  the  United 
States  in  June,  1884.  Soon  after  his  arrival  he  accepted 
the  editorship  of  the  newly  founded  party  organ  in 
New-  York,  "  Der  Sozialist,"  which  he  retained  until  he 
moved  to  Chicago,  in  1886,  at  my  solicitation,  with  my 
two  sisters  and  one  brother.  One  of  his  daughters,  who 
had  married  in  Russia  was  the  only  one  of  the  family 
remaining  in  Europe. 

In  Chicago,  my  father  wrote  in  1886  a  work  of  60 
pages,  entitled  "  Excursions  of  a  Socialist  into  the  Do- 
main of  Epistemology,"  which  was  published  in  1887  by 
the  People's  Book  Store  in  Hottingen-Zurich.  In  1887, 
he  wrote  "  The  Positive  Outcome  of  Philosophy." 

When  in  1886  the  editors  of  the  "  Chicagoer  Arbeiter- 
zeitung  "  were  arrested,  to  be  condemned  to  death  a  year 
later  in  the  well-known  anarchist  trial,  my  father  tempo- 
rarily assumed  the  post  of  chief  editor  and  remained  a 
contributor  to  this  paper  up  to  the  time  of  his  death. 

At  this  point,  I  should  like  to  insert  a  few  statements 
about  my  father  which  F.  A.  Sorge,  the  intimate  friend 
of  Marx  and  Engels,  and  the  Nestor  of  the  American 
socialist  movement,  published  in  the  Pioneer  Calendar  of 
the  "  New-Yorker  Volkszeitung,"  in  1902 : 

"  When  he  came  to  America  for  the  third  time,  he 
rented,  in  a  remote  part  of  North  New- Jersey,  an  old, 
almost  dilapidated,  house  which  was  barely  habitable, 
and  there  he  felt  quite  satisfied,  although  visitors  trod 
with  misgivings  on  the  steps  of  the  rickety  stairs  which 
led  to  his  rooms.  In  1884,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in  regard 
to  "  the  Marxian  statement  .  .  .  that  economics  is 
the  basis  (also  for  the  individual)  on  which  the  mental 
superstructures  are  reared.  Our  world  desires  to  live,  to 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH    DIETZGEN  23 

eat  and  drink  in  a  civilized  style,  even  though  it  be  bar- 
barian inside.  But  for  my  part,  I  can  be  at  ease  in  bar- 
barian surroundings,  provided  my  private  economy  is 
arranged  so  that  I  can  devote  myself  without  care  to  the 
superstructure." 

Speaking  of  a  proposed  trip  to  Germany,  he  says  in  a 
letter  of  November  27,  1887:  "I  shall  travel  in  the 
steerage,  because  a  man  who  does  not  make  any  money 
has  to  turn  his  pennies  over  three  times,  before  he  spends 
them.  Besides,  I  feel  more  at  home  in  a  humble  role 
than  on  the  high  horse." 

His  simplicity  of  living  made  him  by  no  means  morose 
or  indifferent  to  the  things  of  the  outer  world.  That  he 
enjoyed  life  and  work  is  clearly  shown  by  the  following 
letter  to  a  friend  of  his  youth,  who  lived  in  New  York: 

SIEGBURG,   September  25,    1869. 

.  .  .  I  have  returned  from  Petersburg  to  the  scenes  of  my 
childhood,  on  the  banks  of  the  Sieg,  have  built  huts  in  Siegburg, 
and  am  tanning  the  skins  of  the  people.  It  occurs  to  me  to 
express  the  wish  that  you  might  likewise  be  so  strongly 
attracted  by  the  home  recollections  that  you  leave  the  Hudson 
and  the  American  chase  after  the  dollar  and  come  home  with 
your  better  half  and  the  material  products  of  your  loins,  in 
order  to  dig  for  treasures  which  neither  the  rust  nor  the  moths 
corrupt,  that  is,  the  general  truths  of  science  and  of  the  historical 
evolution  of  the  human  race.  Although  man,  according  to 
Karl  Vogt,  is  descended  from  monkeys,  he  is  nevertheless  the 
sublime  object. 

At  Otto  Meissner's,  the  well-known  embryo  of  my  youth, 
the  child  which  I  have  long  carried  under  my  heart,  has  at  last 
been  born.  It  has  been  baptized  with  the  name  of  "The 
Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work,  Discussed  by  a  Working  Man. 
A  Renewed  Critique  of  Pure  and  Practical  Reason,"  and  the 
preface  is  signed  "  Joseph  Dietzgen,  Tanner."  I  commend  it 
to  you. 

Another  event  which  moves  my  heart  and  which  will  interest 


24  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

you  is  a  visit  which  was  paid  to  me  about  fourteen  days  ago 
by  our  venerated  hero,  Karl  Marx.  He  stayed  a  few  days  in 
Sieburg  with  his  charming  daughter.  JOSEPH  DIETZGEN. 


Personally,  Joseph  Dietzgen  was  a  tall  and  handsome 
man,  who  strikingly  resembled  the  oft-described  figure  of 
Goethe,  symmetrically  built  and  of  noble  and  unaffected 
bearing,  with  a  frank  and  open  eye  full  of  intelligence 
and  goodness.  His  whole  being  inspired  respect  and 
veneration.  He  went  almost  too  far  in  his  modesty  and 
unselfishness,  especially  in  his  relations  with  the  pub- 
lishers of  the  "  Sozialist  "  in  New  York,  the  National 
Executive  of  the  Socialist  Labor  Party,  who  made  life 
very  unpleasant  for  him  while  he  acted  as  editor  of  their 
paper.  But  with  all  his  modesty  and  unassuming  bear- 
ing, he  still  showed  manliness  and  true  courage.  While 
the  National  Committee,  after  the  throwing  of  the  bomb 
at  the  Haymarket  in  Chicago,  thought  only  of  repudiating 
all  connection  with  the  anarchists,  and  with  anarchism, 
Dietzgen,  in  the  very  midst  of  lawlessness  of  the  heroes 
of  "  law  and  order,"  went  to  the  persecuted  and  reviled 
and  offered  them  his  help  and  comfort  in  the  hour  of 
their  need.  It  required  real  courage  and  strength  of 
character  to  do  so  at  that  time.  It  was  a  purely  humane 
and  manly  act  on  his  part,  for  which  the  Chicago  police 
rewarded  him  by  searching  his  house  and  scaring  his 
children. 

One  of  the  contributors  to  the  "  Chicagoer  Arbeiter- 
zeitung "  of  that  period  described  Joseph  Dietzgen's 
actions  and  bearing  in  those  times  as  follows :  "  When 
in  May,  1886,  the  waves  of  the  labor  movement  began 
to  rise,  when  the  Haymarket  bomb  had  exploded  and 
the  reaction  followed  with  a  police  rule  similar  to  that 
of  Russia,  when  cautious  and  soberminded  men  considered 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH    DIETZGEN  2$ 

it  well  to  deny  any  connection  with  the  arrest  of  editors 
of  the  "  Arbeiterzeitung,"  an  old  gentleman  intro- 
duced himself,  on  May  6,  to  those  of  the  publishers  who 
had  not  preferred  to  take  to  the  woods.  He  offered  them 
his  services,  because  he  considered  it  his  duty  to  jump 
into  the  breach  and  fill  the  place  of  those  comrades  whoi 
had  been  torn  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  fighters,  and  because 
he  considered  it  necessary  that  the  Chicago  workers 
should  not  be  without  an  organ  in  those  trying  times. 

This  old  gentleman,  of  giant  stature,  with  the  bearing 
of  a  patriarch,  such  as  we  see  in  good  old  pictures,  was 
Joseph  Dietzgen,  who  had  shortly  before  joined  his  chil- 
dren in  the  young  metropolis,  in  order  to  pass  the  re- 
mainder of  his  days  in  the  circle  of  his  adoring  family. 
It  was  the  same  Dietzgen  who  had  often  been  reviled  and 
ridiculed  in  this  Chicago  paper  by  Spies  and  his  com- 
panions, in  a  spiteful  controversy,  which,  starting  from 
a  principle,  had  been  directed  by  them  against  the  un- 
known personality  and  sometimes  old-fashioned  and  orna- 
mental style  of  Dietzgen. 

That  this  offer  of  Dietzgen's,  who  asked  no  pay  for  his 
services,  and  did  not  expect  any,  was  brave  and  unselfish, 
was  not  only  admitted  by  those  to  whom  he  had  made  it, 
but  was  also  admired  and  appreciated  by  all  who  learned 
of  it  then  and  later.  His  offer  was  accepted,  and  when 
two  weeks  later  the  administrative  board  of  the  Socialist 
Publishing  Society  convened,  they  elected  Dietzgen 
unanimously  to  the  position  of  chief  editor  of  the  three 
papers  published  by  this  society,  "  Arbeiterzeitung," 
"  Fackel,"  and  "  Vorbote." 

When  the  new  editor  in  chief  assumed  control,  he  made 
the  following  little  address  to  the  employees  which  is 
typical  of  the  whole  man :  "  Gentlemen :  I  have  been 
elected  chief  editor  of  your  papers.  If  this  position  re- 


26  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

quires  the  duties  of  an  overseer  or  driver,  then  I  am 
not  fit  for  it.  I  shall  confine  myself  to  the  writing  of  my 
articles.  It  is  said  that  there  is  no  harmony  in  this 
office.  Well,  if  you  can  have  confidence  in  me,  I  shall 
be  pleased  to  have  you  present  your  differences  of  opinion 
to  me.  I  shall  then  try  to  act  as  arbitrator  and  to  establish 
peace." 

Well,  the  dissension  was  not  so  very  great,  but  the 
editorial  staff  learned  to  have  confidence  in  their  chief 
and  to  venerate  him  like  a  father.  This  relationship  re- 
mained undisturbed,  although  Dietzgen  did  not  stay  in  his 
position  very  long,  but  resigned  his  title  and  was  satisfied 
to  contribute  articles  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  in  April, 
1888.  Being  almost  too  modest  and  avoiding  publicity 
with  excessive  bashfulness,  he  became  very  little  known 
personally  in  Chicago.  But  all  who  were  fortunate 
enough  to  become  acquainted  with  him,  loved  the  man  and 
respected  his  character." 

And  Sorge  continues :  "  Dietzgen  was  assailed  by 
friend  and  foe  for  his  stand  in  defending  the  prisoners 
and  taking  editorial  charge  of  the  '  Chicagoer  Arbeiter- 
zeitung,'  during  the  prosecution  of  Spies  and  his  com- 
rades. He  tried  to  lessen  the  differences  between  social- 
ists and  anarchists1  by  emphazing  that  which  was 
common  to  both,  in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  a 
cultivated  use  of  the  intellect  which  teaches  that  '  there 
are  only  differences  of  degree,  not  radical  differences,  not 
absolute  differences  between  things.  Contradictions  are 

1  Wherever  we  mention  anarchists,  it  should  be  remembered  that  we 
refer  to  the  Chicago  anarchists,  so-called  "  communist  anarchists,"  who 
were  no  individualists,  but  sincere,  though  very  radical  and  theoretically 
unclear  proletarian  revolutionaries.  It  was  these  men  whom  my  father 
tried  to  win  back  for  the  socialist  labor  movement,  not  individualist 
anarchists,  as  was  thought  by  comrades  in  New  York  and  Europe. 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH    DIETZGEN  27 

solved  by  reasonable  distinctions/  he  says  in  his  '  Positive 
Outcome  of  Philosophy.' " 

To  a  friend  in  the  East  of  the  United  States  he  wrote 
on  April  20,  1886:  "For  my  part,  I  lay  little  stress  on 
the  distinction,  whether  a  man  is  an  anarchist  or  a 
socialist,  because  it  seems  to  me  that  too  much  weight  is 
attributed  to  this  difference.  While  the  anarchists  may 
have  mad  and  brainless  individualists  in  their  ranks,  the 
socialists  have  an  abundance  of  cowards.  For  this  reason 
I  care  as  much  for  the  one  as  the  other.  The  majority  in 
both  camps  are  still  in  great  need  of  education,  and  this 
will  bring  about  a  reconciliation  in  good  time." 

On  May  17,  1886,  he  wrote:  "I  was  of  the  opinion 
that  the  difference  between  socialists  and  anarchists  should 
not  be  exaggerated,  and  when  the  bomb  exploded  and 
the  staff  of  the  '  Arbeiterzeitung '  was  imprisoned,  I  at 
once  offered  my  services,  which  were  accepted."  He 
wished  to  be  only  collaborator,  not  editor,  and  said 
further :  "  Anarchism  would  not  have  disturbed  me  so 
very  much,  only  Mostism,  which  makes  a  system  of 
violent  assaults  and  private  vengeance,  could  never  have 
been  congenial  to  me.  I  do  not  believe  that  this  or  that 
row  hurts  the  party  as  much  as  the  oversensitive  are  try- 
ing to  make  out.  On  the  contrary,  a  nation  should  also 
be  taught  to  assert  itself." 

When  Dietzgen  went  to  Chicago,  he  had  been  asked 
by  the  National  Executive  Committee  of  the  Socialist 
Labor  Party  to  write  articles  on  the  situation  in  Chicago. 
But  when  he  sent  his  report  on  the  Haymarket  riot,  it 
was  rejected,  because  "  it  was  diametrically  opposed  to 
the  views  of  the  Committee."  Dietzgen  then  made  sharp 
attacks  on  the  "  Sozialist "  and  the  National  Executive 
Committee  by  various  articles  in  the  "  Chicagoer  Arbeiter- 
r,"  and  he  wrote  to  a  friend  about  this  on  June  9, 


2$  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

1886:  .  .  .  "I  call  myself  an  anarchist  in  this 
quotation,  and  the  passage  left  out  explains  what  I  mean 
by  anarchism.  I  define  it  in  a  more  congenial  sense  than 
is  usually  done.  According  to  me, —  and  I  am  at  one  in 
this  with  all  the  better  and  best  comrades, —  we  shall  not 
arrive  at  the  new  society  without  serious  troubles.  I  even 
think  that  we  shall  not  get  along  without  wild  disturb- 
ances, without  '  anarchy.'  I  believe  that  '  anarchy ' 
will  be  the  stage  of  transition.  Dyed-in-the-wool  anarch- 
ists pretend  that  anarchism  is  the  final  stage  of  society. 
To  that  extent  they  are  rattle  brains  who  think  they  are 
the  most  radical  people.  But  we  are  the  real  radicals  who 
work  for  the  communist  order  above  and  beyond  anarch- 
ism. The  final  aim  is  socialist  order,  not  anarchist  dis- 
order. If  the  Chicago  comrades  would  now  avail  them- 
selves of  the  state  of  affairs  in  their  city,  I  could  help 
them  considerably.  The  anarchists  would  then  join  our 
ranks  and  would  form,  together  with  the  best  socialists 
of  all  countries,  a  united  and  active  troop,  before  which 
such  weaklings  as  Stiebeling,  Fabian,  Vogt,  Viereck,  and 
others  would  be  dispersed  and  forced  to  crawl  under 
cover.  For  this  reason,  I  think,  the  terms  anarchist, 
socialist,  communist,  should  be  mixed  together  so  that  no 
muddle  head  could  tell  which  is  which.  Language  serves 
not  only  the  purpose  of  distinguishing  things,  but  also 
of  uniting  them,  for  it  is  dialectic.  The  words,  and  the 
intellect  which  gives  meaning  to  language,  cannot  do 
anything  else  but  give  us  a  picture  of  things.  Hence 
man  may  use  them  freely,  so  long  as  he  accomplishes 
his  purpose."  . 

The  dispute  was  carried  along  for  some  time,  and  when 
finally  his  friend  in  the  East  rebuked  him  also,  Dietzgen 
wrote  on  April  9,  1888,  a  few  days  before  his  death :  "  I 
am  still  well  satisfied  with  my  approach  to  the  anarchists 


LIFE   OF   JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  2Q 

and  am  convinced  that  I  have  accomplished  some  good 
by  it." 

Dietzgen  was  full  of  humor,  always  inclined  to  tease 
his  friends  and  members  of  his  family,  and  was  in  no 
way  a  Philistine.  When  some  acquaintance  reminded 
him  of  a  promise,  he  replied :  "  Never  take  my  word  for 
anything,  but  consider  it  to  be  like  mercury." 

And  to  a  female  friend  of  the  family,  he  wrote :  "  If 
the  children  or  one  of  them  should  complain  about  my 
making  more  promises  than  I  keep,  I  wish  you  would 
not  think  evil  of  me.  It  is  the  fault  of  the  credulous 
children  whom  I  have  taught  from  their  youth  that  they 
must  not  believe  everything  I  promise,  but  they  are  in- 
curable in  this  respect." 

Another  time  he  announces  that  he  still  has  an  income 
of  two  marks  per  day  in  Germany  and  continues :  "  I 
shall  try  next  summer,  and  anticipate  great  pleasure  from 
so  doing,  to  live  on  this  sum  in  some  German  village  like 
some  cavalier  in  reduced  circumstances." 

In  a  letter  of  July  18,  1887,  he  sounds  a  ribald  note: 
"  I  have  read  Diintzer's  '  Life  of  Goethe  '  of  late.  This 
noble  poet  was  a  great  Don  Juan !  How  well  he  could 
love  and  jilt!  His  many  loves  have  inspired  me  with  a 
strong  desire  to  imitate  him,  only  I  fear  that  I  should 
have  more  trouble  in  being  faithless.  On  the  whole,  the 
man  is  an  admirable  character." 

In  November,  1887,  he  announces  that  he  has  received 
money  for  some  literary  work  and  adds :  "  Now  I  am  a 
rich  man,  and  as  soon  as  my  engagement  with  the  paper 
here  has  expired,  I  shall  return  to  Germany  and  try  the 
pleasure  of  a  hermit  life  in  my  native  village.  That  is 
my  ideal.  Then,  if  I  could  find  some  old  sweetheart  of 
my  youth  in  that  place,  I  challenge  my  century." 

On  February  2,  1888,  he  wrote  :     "  .      .      .     There  is 


30  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

still  another  thing  which  occupies  me  a  great  deal  and 
which  I  can  mention  to  you  only  quite  confidentially. 
.  I  am  engaged  in  deepening  an  old  friendship  of 
my  youth  into  love.  If  I  knew  that  you  were  in  a  better 
mood  to  listen,  I  should  tell  you  a  little  more  about  the 
foolishness  of  the  aged ;  but  now  I  shall  wait  for  a  better 
time  ..." 

While  Dietzgen  accomplished  remarkable  work  in 
philosophy,  and  especially  in  dialectics,  he  was  not  less 
at  home  in  political  economy,  in  the  study  of  the  industrial 
development  of  society.  With  his  sharp  foresight,  he 
soon  recognized  the  trend  of  modern  modes  of  capitalist 
production  and  their  reaction  on  the  political  conditions 
of  the  various  countries. 

As  early  as  1881,  he  wrote  from  Germany:  "The 
United  States  will  in  my  opinion  remain  the  land  of  the 
future  in  bourgeois  society.  By  means  of  the  competition 
of  the  New  World,  the  oppressive  atmosphere  of  Europe 
will  be  cleared.  Agriculture  is  visibly  on  the  decline  in 
Germany.  The  land  is  becoming  more  and  more  an  ap- 
pendage of  the  cities  and  is  turned  into  hunting  grounds, 
parks,  and  country  homes.  And  if  our  nation  does  not 
rally  soon  and  overthrow  its  exploiters,  the  whole  of 
Europe  will  soon  become  a  sporting  place  of  Americans. 
Our  working  men  emigrate  to  America,  and  the  fatted 
bourgeois  immigrate  from  over  there.  Then  they  will 
have  their  factories  in  America,  and  their  residences  in 
Europe." 

And  a  few  years  later,  in  the  first  letter  on  logic  written 
to  his  son,  he  declares  that  democratic  and  proletarian  in- 
terests are  identical  and  continues :  "If  this  is  not  yet 
well  recognized  in  the  United  States,  it  is  due  more  to  the 
fortunate  natural  resources  of  that  country  than  to  the 
scientific  insight  of  its  democracy.  The  spreading 


LIFE  OF  JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  3! 

primeval  forests  and  prairies  offered  innumerable  home- 
steads to  the  poor  and  glossed  the  antagonism  between 
capitalists  and  laborers,  between  capitalist  and  proletarian 
democracy.  But  you  still  lack  the  knowledge  of  prole- 
tarian economics  which  would  enable  you  to  recognize 
without  a  doubt  that  precisely  on  the  republican  ground 
of  America,  capitalism  is  making  giant  strides  and  re- 
vealing ever  more  clearly  its  twofold  task  of  first  enslav- 
ing the  people  for  the  purpose  of  freeing  them  in  due 
time." 

This  is  not  the  place  to  dwell  on  the  main  works  of 
Dietzgen,  "  The  Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work "  and 
"  The  Positive  Outcome  of  Philosophy."  But  it  may  be 
said  that  Monism,  the  science  of  the  unity  of  all  being,  did 
not  find  a  more  eloquent,  convinced  and  convincing 
champion  than  Joseph  Dietzgen  in  the  second  half  of  the 
XlXth  century.  He  handled  his  dialectics,  the  midwife  of 
his  philosophical  productions,  in  a  wonderfully  refreshing 
and  original  manner.  In  that  very  interesting  work 
"  Feuerbach,  The  Roots  of  the  Socialist  Philosophy," 
Frederick  Engels  explains  the  nature  of  dialectics  and 
says :  "  And  this  materialistic  dialectics,  which  for 
years  has  been  our  best  tool  and  our  sharpest  weapon, 
was  discovered,  not  by  us  alone,  but  by  a  German  work- 
man, Joseph  Dietzgen,  in  a  remarkable  manner  and  utterly 

independent  of  us  and  even  of  Hegel."  Here  I 

leave  the  data  furnished  by  Sorge. 

Those  who  had  become  acquainted  with  my  father's 
impressive  and  high-spirited  style,  were  surprised  at  his 
mildness  and  modest  reserve,  when  they  made  his  per- 
sonal acquaintance.  But  behind  these  qualities,  there 
stood  the  just  pride  of  his  true  convictions.  We  children 
had  the  utmost  liberty  in  our  intercourse  with  him,  but 
when  we  tried  to  abuse  this  freedom  or  to  be  too  smart, 


32  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

then  he  quickly  shamed  us  by  a  few  words  or  by  a  mean- 
ing glance.  A  happier  man  than  my  father  would  have 
been  hard  to  find,  and  none  who  was  more  loyal  in  all 
his  relations. 

Death  was  to  him,  as  to  Feuerbach,  not  an  evil.  But  he 
dreaded  long  suffering  and  admitted  that  he  was  afraid  of 
it,  while  he  bore  short  attacks  of  illness  with  resignation 
and  even  with  good  humor.  Death  finally  proved  a  friend 
to  him,  for  it  left  him  only  a  few  seconds  of  time  to  feel 
the  shortness  of  breath  and  consternation  which  I  read  in 
his  face  when  he  fell  into  my  arms,  breathing  his  last. 
Paralysis  of  the  heart  killed  him  within  two  minutes.  It 
was  on  a  pleasant  Sunday,  April  15,  1888.  In  the  morn- 
ing, after  a  walk  in  springclad  Lincoln  Park,  we  had 
emptied  a  bottle  of  wine  between  the  two  of  us  and  had 
come  home  to  dinner  in  the  best  of  spirits.  My  father 
enjoyed  his  meal  with  his  customary  hearty  appetite. 
When  coffee  was  served  immediately  after  dinner,  one  of 
my  acquaintances  happened  to  drop  in.  This  was  the 
cause  of  my  father's  lighting  a  cigar  (instead  of  taking 
a  half  hour's  nap  as  usual)  and  taking  part  in  our  con- 
versation on  the  social  question.  My  acquaintance  had 
not  even  a  superficial  knowledge  of  the  subject,  which  did 
not  prevent  him,  however,  from  making  offhand  state- 
ments. In  spite  of  my  remonstrance  against  such 
ignorance,  my  father  became  more  vivacious  and  excited 
than  I  had  ever  seen  him.  With  a  seriousness  and 
emphasis  which  I  shall  never  forget,  he  related  that  he 
had  foreseen  the  modern  labor-movement  forty  years 
before  this  date,  and  proceeded  to  explain  his  views  on  the 
imminent  collapse  of  capitalist  production,  when  suddenly 
he  stopped  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  with  his  hand 
uplifted,  and  died  in  the  manner  described  above.  He 
was  not  quite  sixty  years  old. 


LIFE  OF  JOSEPH   DIETZGEN  33 

Simply  and  without  any  show,  in  harmony  with  the 
character  of  my  father,  we  buried  him  by  the  side  of  the 
murdered  anarchists  in  Forest  Home  Cemetery  near  Chi- 
cago, on  April  17,  1888. 

(Translated  by  Ernest  Untermann.) 


AN    ILLUSTRATION    OF   THE    PROLETARIAN 
METHOD  OF  RESEARCH  AND  CON- 
CEPTION OF  THE  WORLD. 

MAX  STIRNER  AND  JOSEPH  DIETZGEN. 
BY    EUGENE    DIETZGEN. 

LOCARNO,  March,   1905. 

Stirner's  work  "  The  Individual  and  His  Property " 
(Der  Einzige  und  sein  Eigentum),  by  its  fundamental 
conception  and  frank  advocacy  of  the  principle  of  self- 
centered  individualism,  reminds  one  of  Macchiavelli's 
work,  "  The  Book  of  Princes."  Stirner  is  the  most  con- 
sistent modern  champion  of  the  individualist-anarchist, 
or  bourgeois,  manner  of  thought,  which  is  represented  in 
literature  by  such  stars  as  Schopenhauer,  Hartmann, 
Nietzsche,  Hauptmann,  Ibsen,  Lombroso,  D'Annunzio, 
Tolstoi,  Maeterlinck,  or  men  like  Chamberlain  and  Brooks 
Adams.  For  this  reason,  we  shall  employ  "  The  Indi- 
vidual and  his  Property  "  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating 
the  proletarian  monist  method  of  research  and  world-con- 
ception, elaborated  for  the  first  time  on  the  basis  of  a 
theory  of  understanding  by  Joseph  Dietzgen,  by  com- 
paring this  theory  with  the  dualist  bourgeois  conception 
of  the  mind  and  of  the  world. 

Stirner  is  unique,  stimulating,  and  brilliant  in  his 
negative  criticism  of  the  supernatural  belief  in  the  cre- 
ative power  of  the  absolute,  or  "  pure,"  spirit.  But  he 
fails  completely,  and  becomes  himself  sterile  and  be- 

35 


36  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

witched,  as  soon  as  a  positive  criticism  of  his  subject  is 
demanded.  On  this  field,  he  has  long  been  outdone  by 
the  historical  materialism  of  Marx  and  Engels  and  the 
theory  of  understanding  of  Dietzgen. 

Stirner  declared  war  against  all  spooks  and  their  sup- 
porters, because  Christianity,  liberalism,  and  Utopian  com- 
munism, instead  of  seeing  through  the  hallucinations  of 
the  socalled  pure  spirit  and  its  catchwords  of  god,  liberty, 
morality,  law,  state,  society,  authority,  etc.,  welcomed  it 
and  its  creatures  as  allies  for  the  degradation  and  enslave- 
ment of  the  individual.  However,  while  Stirner  flattered 
himself  with  having  discovered  an  impregnable  method  of 
combat,  he  did  not  follow  the  example  of  Marx  and 
Engels,  who  confronted  the  aprioristic  hallucinations  with 
the  sober  demonstration  of  the  historical  fact,  that  they 
were  but  necessary  phenomena  and  companions  of  ten- 
dencies, which  are  conditioned  on  particular  processes  of 
social  life  and  cannot,  therefore,  disappear  until  these  do. 
Nor  did  it  occur  to  him  to  forge  a  mighty  weapon  against 
obsolete  conceptions  after  the  manner  of  Dietzgen,  who, 
inspired  by  historical  materialism,  deepened  and  elabo- 
rated it  into  a  conception  of  the  world  by  means  of  his 
analysis  of  the  force  of  thought  and  understanding  which 
revealed  the  dependence  of  the  human  mind  on  social 
conditions  as  well  as  its  interrelation  with  nature  and  the 
universe.  We  shall  show  in  the  following  lines,  that 
Dietzgen's  theory  of  understanding  was  the  first  to  thus 
completely  demonstrate  the  phantastic  nature  of  all  purely 
deductive  abstractions  and  of  the  "  pure  "  spirit.  Stirner 
does  not  do  anything  of  the  kind,  but  contents  himself 
with  pointing  out  the  injuriousness  of  pure  catchwords 
for  the  trusting  individual,  without  suspecting  the  social 
and  cosmic  origin  and  basis  of  those  catchwords.  Conse- 
quently he  necessarily  remains  in  the  same  circle  of  mental 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  37 

hallucinations  as  his  bourgeois  opponents.  And  accord- 
ingly he  recommends  as  a  panacea  —  the  same  as  all 
anarchists  after  him  —  that  the  consciously  egoistic  self, 
that  is  to  say  the  individual  with  his  psycho-physical 
power,  who  considers  himself  above  society,  be  seated 
upon  the  world-throne  as  an  individual  and  independent 
power,  enjoying  in  his  capacity  of  autocrat  and  hyper- 
man  only  individual  rights,  without  regard  to  society  and 
nature  and  without  any  duties. 

Stirner's  ideas  are  not  completely  intelligible,  unless 
one  takes  into  consideration  the  most  advanced  intellectual 
tendencies  preceding  the  March  revolution,  under  whose 
influence  he  wrote  his  work.  In  this  category  belong 
especially  the  speculative  communism  of  Babeuf,  Proud^ 
hon,  and  Weitling,  the  first  attempts  of  critical  com- 
munism made  by  Marx  and  Engels  in  the  "  Deutsch- 
Franzoesischen  Jahrbuecher  "  (German-French  Annals), 
in  March,  1844,  which  Stirner  understood  merely  in  an 
ideological  way,  furthermore  Hegel's  dialectic,  and  finally 
Feuerbach's  realistic  humanitarianism  (The  Essence  of 
Christianity)  and  Bauer's  idealistic  humanitarianism  (in 
the  "  Allgemeine  Literaturzeitung  "). 

In  this  storm  and  stress  period,  Stirner  deserves  men- 
tion as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  minds  of  liberal  intel- 
lectualism,  excelling  by  his  quaint  natural  wit  and  his 
artistic  imagination. 

In  his  vain  struggle  with  the  ideological  method  of 
speculation  and  its  spook  of  a  pure  spirit,  he  has  many 
a  flash  of  bright  thought,  which  strikes  one  like  that  of 
some  modern  thinker,  making  a  passionate  appeal  to  one's 
selfreliance  and  independent  thought,  selfdependence  and 
selfemancipation,  as  opposed  to  the  servile  degradation 
of  one's  personality  by  religious,  philosophical,  liberal,  and 
social  spooks.  It  is  this  spirited  appeal  to  selfrespect, 


38  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

which  constitutes  the  important  merit  of  Stirner's  work, 
for  by  means  of  it  he  creates  at  least  strong  doubts  as 
to  the  authority  of  any  and  all  spooks,  which  are  the 
creations  of  the  aprioristic  conceptions  of  the  clerically 
divine,  liberally  moral,  and  socially  humanitarian  ideolo- 
gies. 

Stirner  also  takes  occasion  to  say  words  full  of  warmth 
and  strength  about  the  proletariat,  without,  however, 
realizing  the  definite  historical  role  of  this  class  and 
economic  category  of  society. 

The  entire  work  of  Stirner  is  pervaded  as  much  by  his 
strong  side,  the  negative  ridicule  of  the  catchwords  of 
speculative  idealism,  as  by  his  weak  side,  the  fantastic  and 
idealistic  deification  of  pure  egoism. 

The  reader  will  look  in  vain  for  some  positive  point 
of  vantage  in  this  hymn  of  egoism.  It  has  neither  bot- 
tom nor  boundaries.  Stirner  is  not  content  to  use  egoism 
as  an  indispensable  and  sound  weapon  against  the  hypo- 
critical, sentimental,  and  servile  selfdenial,  which  is  being 
preached  by  the  priesthood  of  all  creeds.  Instead,  he  has 
such  an  exaggerated  and  fantastic  conception  of  egoism, 
that  it  loses  all  definite  outlines  and  becomes  quite  as 
much  of  a  spook  as  the  clerical  and  liberal  liberty,  law, 
humanity,  authority,  etc. 

With  equal  lack  of  insight  into  the  natural  differentia- 
tion and  at  the  same  time  natural  unity  of  all  things 
and  phenomena  Christianity  worships  the  spirit  of  god, 
liberalism  the  spirit  of  the  individual,  Hegel  the  absolute 
ideal,  Feuerbach  human  love.  And  so  Stirner  worships 
self-love.  In  his  egoism,  the  immediate,  more  remote, 
and  most  remote  personal  interests  all  merge  without  dis- 
tinction into  one,  so  that  love,  selfsacrifice,  selfdenial,  and 
even  selfdestruction  have  an  indiscriminate  place  in  it. 

It  is  this  peculiar  antidialectic  conception  of  abstract 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  39 

ideas,  which  gives  to  Stirner  such  a  confused  notion  of 
egoism,  and  of  the  importance  and  power  of  the  individual 
separated  from  society,  and  by  this  means  he  places  his 
followers,  the  anarchists  of  every  shade  and  the  supermen 
of  the  Nietzsche  stamp,  on  strained  terms  with  all  sober 
logic. 

Experience  teaches,  that  a  man  becomes  possessed  as 
soon  as  he  falls  so  completely  into  thraldom  to  catchwords, 
that  he  only  believes  in  them  and  makes  no  conscious 
effort  to  analyze  them  and  bring  them  into  accord  with 
the  array  of  facts  which  can  be  tested  empirically.  With 
naive  faith,  superstition  and  fantasy  simultaneously  begin 
their  confusing  play.  Then  the  intellectuals  among  the 
liberal  and  confessional  preachers  know  how  to  inaugurate 
their  partly  brilliant,  partly  artistic,  scintillation  of  words, 
which  enables  the  shrewdest  of  them  to  hoodwink  the 
gullible.  It  is  a  perplexing  music  which  the  leading 
preachers  make  for  their  faithful  lambs  in  order  to  fish 
in  troubled  waters,  either  consciously  or  unconsciously. 
Among  others,  apart  from  Stirner,  it  is  by  the  way, 
especially  Nietzsche,  who  is  such  an  unconscious  fisher- 
man, and  who  even  excels  his  master  in  his  confusion  of 
abstract  ideas.  In  spite  of  the  perfect  form  of  such  works 
as  "  Thus  Spake  Zarathustra,"  it  will  be  hard  to  find  any 
reader,  who  would  be  able  to  cull  from  this  tinkling  of 
words  a  single  clear  and  new  thought,  which  would  stand 
the  test  of  scientific  analysis. 

Because  morality,  order,  law,  the  state,  etc.,  have  so 
long  been  employed  as  bogies,  therefore  Stirner  opines 
that  this  whole  plunder  should  be  thrown  away. 

He  derives  the  right  of  sterile  negation  from  his 
extravagant  lack  of  discernment.  But  for  this  very 
reason,  Stirner  cannot  detach  himself  from  faith  and 
arrive  at  science.  For  him,  in  true  bourgeois  fashion, 


4O  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

the  dependent  nature  of  the  individual  on  the  universe 
and  society  has  remained  as  much  of  a  riddle  as  the 
equally  dependent  nature  cf  those  abstract  ideas.  And 
thus  he  struggles  helplessly  in  his  own  snares.  Because 
the v  individual  is  abused  by  those  catchwords,  which 
neither  the  liberals  nor  himself  could  digest,  therefore 
they  have  no  right  to  existence  at  all  in  the  opinion  of 
Stirner  and  are  supposed  to  fall  at  the  mere  command  of 
his  self,  his  individuality.  And  such  a  harebrained  men- 
tality is  taken  seriously  by  the  anarchists,  by  Nietzsche, 
and  his  disciples ! 

The  work  of  Stirner  naturally  ends  in  making  a  saint 
of  the  pure  ego.  This  is  the  insane  idea  of  the  "  Indi- 
vidual "  and  his  unenviable  "  Property,"  as  we  shall  now 
try  to  demonstrate  more  clearly. 

We  certainly  agree  with  Stirner  in  opposing  the  priestly 
and  illadvised  use  of  catchwords,  but  we  do  not  spill  the 
child  with  the  bathing  water.  If  Stirner  had  not  him- 
self remained  entrapped  in  priestly  conceptions,  he  would 
have  made  short  work  of  the  absolute  sacredness  of  those 
great  catchwords,  by  analyzing  them  and  demonstrating 
that  they  were  relatively  sacred,  that  is  to  say  wholesome, 
according  to  time  and  place. 

It  is  no  wonder,  that  the  fundamentally  Utopian  state- 
ments of  Babeuf,  Proudhon,  and  Weitling  did  not  lead  the 
most  typical  apostle  of  anarchism  into  a  new  road.  The 
same  is  also  true  of  the  romantic  articles  of  Bruno  Bauer. 
But  at  least  Hegel's  dialectics  and  Feuerbach's  theses 
should  have  stimulated  Stirner  to  more  fertile  thoughts 
than  a  mere  negative  critique,  granted  that  such  a  critique 
on  his  part  was  in  some  respects  justified,  if  he  had  only 
possessed  a  little  more  aptitude  for  historical  interde- 
pendence and  the  theory  of  understanding. 

For  want  of  study  of  the  laws  of  thought  and  society, 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  41 

Stirner's  struggles  for  a  positive  conception  of  the  world 
did  not  yield  any  clear  result  concerning  the  relation  of  the 
individual  toward  society  and  nature.  This  is  the  final 
reason  that  prevents  him  from  culling  the  sound  kernel  •- 
from  the  catchwords  which  he  criticizes.  It  is  therefore 
but  a  consistent  act  of  helpless  desperation  and  a  bowing 
to  the  undefeated  spooks,  that  he  always  hides  behind 
the  armor  of  a  knight  of  pure  egoism. 

He  sees,  indeed,  the  interaction  of  mind  and  body  and 
that  of  these  two  in  society  and  nature,  so  that  their 
mutual  interdependence  is  revealed.  But  he  does  not 
arrive  at  a  clear  understanding  of  the  degree  and  im- 
portance of  the  dependent  role  of  the  individual  factors  in 
this  interrelation,  because  the  actual  mutuality  and  oppo- 
sition of  phenomena  obscures  for  him  their  equally 
real  social  and  cosmic  unity.  But  it  is  this  total  interre- 
lation of  all  phenomena,  which  compels  man  to  distinguish 
the  individual  relations,  according  to  their  importance,  by 
genera,  species,  classes,  families,  etc.,  in  order  to  orient 
himself  in  the  universe.  Stirner  lacks  appreciation  for 
the  dialectics  and  interrelation  of  things  and  thoughts. 
Hence  the  understanding  does  not  come  to  him,  that  the 
human  individual,  being  a  product  of  nature  in  body  and 
soul,  is  so  inseparably  and  universally  connected  with 
nature,  that  his  growing  individuality  and  power  is  con- 
ditioned on  the  increasing  understanding  and  utilization 
of  this  natural,  and  socially  ever-increasing,  dependence. 
He  ignores  furthermore  the  fact,  that  such  an  under- 
standing and  utilization-  is  not  due  to  the  individual 
personality  as  such,  but  to  its  capacity  as  a  member  of 
society  and  nature,  because  the  individual  can  exist  only 
in  this  capacity,  and  develop,  gain  power  and  exercise  it 
by  this  means.  And  finally  he  remains  ignorant  of  the 
fact,  that  a  society  and  its  egos  are  mainly  determined,  so 


42  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

far  as  the  historical  peculiarity  of  their  existence  is  con- 
cerned, by  the  particular  degree  of  development  of  the 
social  forces  of  production  of  their  time.  This  under- 
standing came  to  Engels  by  a  study  of  the  English,  to 
Marx  by  that  of  the  French  revolution,  and  it  came  to 
both  of  them  at  the  time  of  Stirner.  While  Feuerbach 
had  demonstrated,  that  men  and  human  existence  were  not 
created  by  god  (spirit,  consciousness),  but  that  man  had 
created  god  after  his  own  image,  Marx,  having  studied 
also  social  science,  taught  furthermore :  "  It  is  not  the 
consciousness  of  men  that  determines  their  existence,  but 
their  social  existence  which  determines  their  conscious- 
ness." 

Mehring  has  shown  in  volume  II  of  the  "  Posthumous 
Writings  of  Marx,  Engels,  and  Lassalle,"  that  Marx  had 
found  the  enlightening  sentences  almost  literally  in  the 
works  of  the  oldest  French  socialists :  "  If  man  is  formed 
by  external  circumstances,  then  circumstances  must  be 
modeled  to  suit  man.  If  man  is  by  nature  social,  then 
he  can  develop  his  true  nature  only  in  society,  and  the 
power  of  his  nature  must  not  be  judged  by  the  power  of 
the  single  individual,  but  by  that  of  his  social  surround- 
ings." In  the  further  development  of  this  thought,  Marx 
wrote  in  the  "  German-French  Annals  " :  "  Not  until 
the  real,  individual  man  discards  the  abstract  citizen  of 
the  state  and  realizes  that  he,  as  an  individual,  in  his 
actual  life,  his  individual  work,  his  individual  relations, 
is  a  generic  being,  not  until  man  has  organized  his  indi- 
vidual powers  into  social  powers  and  ceased  to  separate  his 
social  powers  from  his  political  powers,  will  human  eman- 
cipation be  accomplished."  (See  Mehring,  "  Posthumous 
Writings,  etc.,"  volume  I,  page  352,  German  edition.) 

The  Marxian  term  "  generic  being,"  which  is  plainly 
defined  at  this  place  as  an  individual  conscious  of  his  social 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  43 

power,  is  ridiculed  by  Stirner  as  an  empty  abstraction,  be- 
cause he  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it  from  mere 
ideological  narrowmindedness.  Stirner  also  passed  with- 
out understanding  by  the  other  attempts  at  critical  com- 
munism, which  Engels  published  in  the  same  periodical 
in  his  "  Outlines  For  A  Critique  Of  Political  Economy." 

"I  have  built  my  affairs  on  nothing  (but  myself)." 
With  this  pert  statement,  Stirner  begins  and  concludes  his 
book. 

It  is  not  nature,  the  creator  of  the  human  individual, 
nor  society,  the  supporter  of  his  life,  which  are  the 
determining  powers,  according  to  Stirner,  but  the  single 
individual,  who  acknowledges  them  only  so  far  as  they 
serve  him.  But  if  they  refuse  to  do  him  this  favor,  the 
individual  places  himself  above  nature  and  society  and  be- 
comes —  a  superman.  "  Why  do  you  hesitate  to  take 
courage  and  constitute  yourselves  into  the  center  and  main 
factor  of  things?  Why  do  you  pine  for  liberty  as  you  do 
for  your  dreams?  Are  you  your  own  dream?  Do  not 
stop  to  inquire  of  your  dreams,  your  imaginations,  your 
thoughts,  for  all  that  is  but  a  '  hollow  theory.'  Inquire 
of  yourselves  and  care  for  yourselves  —  that  is  practical, 
and  you  love  to  be  '  practical ' —  Therefore  turn  rather 
to  yourselves  and  be  your  own  gods  or  idols.  Bring 
forth  that  which  is  in  you,  show  it  in  the  light,  reveal  your 
own  selves."  Thus  speaks  Stirner. 

And  how  does  he  propose  to  realize  this  ?  Very  simple ! 
"  I  secure  for  myself  liberty  against  the  world  to  the 
extent  that  I  make  the  world  my  own,  that  I  conquer  and 
take  possession  of  it,  be  this  done  by  any  force  whatever, 
by  persuasion,  request,  a  categorical  demand,  or  even 
hypocrisy,  fraud,  etc. ;  for  the  means  which  I  use  for  this 
purpose  depend  on  what  I  am."  And  again,  "  My  free- 
dom does  not  become  perfect,  until  it  is  my  power;  and 


44  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

by  this  means  I  cease  being  merely  a  free  man  and  I 
become  a  selfpossessed  free  man.  Why  is  the  freedom 
of  nations  an  '  empty  word  '  ?  Because  the  nations  have 
no  power.  With  one  breath  of  the  living  ego  I  blow  down 
whole  nations,  whether  it  be  the  breath  of  a  Nero,  a 
Chinese  emperor,  or  a  poor  writer." 

These  words  remind  one  of  "  Uncle  Braesig,"  who 
thought  he  had  explained  poverty,  when  he  called  it 
"  pauvrete."  Without  power  no  liberty ;  but  how  do  I  get 
power  ?  All  that  Stirner  has  to  say  in  reply  is  that  power 
dwells  in  myself,  in  the  individual,  who  becomes  a  self- 
possessed  free  man,  when  he  brings  forth  power  out  of 
himself.  The  "  free  "  will  of  the  individual  is  supposed 
to  suffice  for  this  purpose!  Leaving  aside  the  fact  that 
Stirner  himself  has  nothing  but  words  to  show  in  sub- 
stantiation of  his  claim! — for  we  learn  from  his  biog- 
rapher that  he  ended  in  poverty  and  misery  in  spite  of  his 
mighty  Ego  —  where  are  there  in  authenticated  history 
any  individuals  endowed  with  such  mighty  wills  and 
power  by  their  own  unaided  personality?  The  super- 
humanly  powerful  role  ascribed  by  historical  fables  to 
chiefs  of  savage  hords,  those  "  selfpossessed  free  men  "  by 
virtue  of  their  physical  strength  and  ability,  has  been  re- 
duced to  its  modest  and  dependent  measure,  and  no  one 
has  accomplished  this  more  thoroughly  than  Lewis  H. 
Morgan  in  his  "  Ancient  Society."  We  need  not,  there- 
fore, pause  for  any  further  consideration  of  the  exag- 
gerated power  of  such  "  strong  men."  The  "  self- 
possessed  "  power  of  the  individuality  is  merely  that 
spleen,  of  which  Stirner  cannot  rid  himself.  This  is  his 
misfortune  and  that  of  all  liberals,  who  have  this  in 
common  with  the  anarchists  and  the  autocrats,  in  short 
with  the  entire  bourgeoisie,  that  they  believe,  in  perfect 
harmony  with  their  system  of  "  free  "  competition,  in  the 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  45 

spook  of  the  selfpossessed  free  individual.  It  is  the 
merit  of  Marx,  Engels,  and  Dietzgen,  to  have  demon- 
strated, that  the  fundamental  explanation  for  this  dogma, 
which  deserves  a  place  by  the  side  of  the  infallibility  of  the 
pope,  is  found  in  definite  conditions  of  production  and 
existence  giving  rise  to  the  dualistic  method  of  thought 
of  a  bourgeoisie  operating  with  absolute  contradictions. 

Marx  and  Engels  have  shown  more  clearly  than  their 
predecessors  the  role  of  the  individual  as  a  social  pow'.r, 
while  Dietzgen  fortified  and  extended  this  proof,  which 
is  of  such  great  consequence  for  the  study  of  socie'y  and 
history,  by  showing  in  his  theory  of  understanding  that 
the  human  faculty  of  thought  is  no  more  and  no  less  than 
an  ordinary  cosmic  force  and  phenomenon.  ?2id  that  it  is 
in  its  activity  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  connection 
with  other  natural  phenomena.  In  thn  way  Dietzgen 
cleared  the  road  for  a  scientific  conception  of  the  world. 
On  the  other  hand,  whether  we  believe  with  the  wor- 
shippers of  a  god  in  a  supernatural  being,  or  with  the 
liberals  in  a  supernatural  human  spirit  and  will,  we  believe 
in  the  same  dualism  and  agree  in  the  last  analysis  with 
the  anarchist  confusion  concerning  the  position  of  the  per- 
sonality in  society  and  nature. 

Religious  dualism:  God  and  nature;  liberal  dualism: 
intangible  spirit  and  tangible  matter ;  anarchist  dualism : 
individual  and  society  —  nature. 

The  dualistic  relationship  between  the  believers  in  a 
god,  free  thinkers,  and  anarchists  is  palpable.  For  the 
believers  in  a  god,  the  rule  of  the  individual  over  man- 
kind is  a  divine  dogma ;  for  the  liberals,  it  is  a  spiritual 
dogma;  and  for  the  anarchists,  it  is  a  demand  of  the 
*  free  "  personality.  For  all  three  of  them,  this  dualism 
obstructs  their  grasp  of  the  monistic  interrelation  of  in- 


46  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

dividuals,  society,  and  nature,  thus  preventing  their  radi- 
cal rupture  with  all  spooks. 

Stirner  ridicules  the  universal  abstract  liberty,  but 
clings  to  an  equally  abstract  power  of  the  "  self-pos- 
sessed "  individual.  However,  he  does  not  take  the  least 
trouble  trying  to  expose  this  power  and  its  anything  but 
individual  origin. 

In  opposition  to  him,  Engels,  standing  on  the  shoulders 
of  Hegel,  drew  the  veil  from  the  verbose  individuality 
and  will-power  of  Stirner  with  the  following  words,  to  be 
found  in  his  "  Anti-Duhring  " :  "  Hegel  was  the  first  to 
correctly  represent  the  relation  of  freedom  and  necessity. 
For  him,  freedom  consisted  in  the  understanding  of 
necessity.  Necessity  is  "  blind  "  only  to  the  extent  that 
it  is  not  understood.  Freedom  is  not  found  in  the 
fancied  independence  from  laws  of  nature,  but  in  the  un- 
derstanding of  these  laws  and  the  resulting  possibility  to 
make  them  produce  definite  effects  according  to  our  plans. 
This  applies  equally  to  the  laws  of  nature  outside  of  so- 
ciety and  to  those  which  regulate  the  physical  and  in- 
tellectual well-being  of  man  inside  of  it,  for  these  two 
classes  of  laws,  while  they  may  be  separated  in  thought, 
cannot  be  held  apart  in  reality.  Freedom  of  will  means, 
therefore,  simply  the  faculty  of  making  decisions  based 
on  understanding.  The  more  a  man's  judgment  con- 
cerning a  certain  question  is  free,  the  greater  will  be 
the  necessity  by  which  the  substance  of  this  judgment 
is  determined.  On  the  other  hand,  ignorance  engenders 
a  vaccillation,  which  chooses  between  various  opposing 
possibilities  with  apparent  arbitrariness,  but  proves  by 
this  very  fact  its  lack  of  freedom,  its  subjection  to  the 
very  thing,  which  it  ought  to  dominate.  Freedom  there- 
fore consists  of  our  control  over  ourselves  and  nature 
based  on  an  understanding  of  natural  necessities.  Hence 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  47 

it  is  as  a  matter  of  course  a  product  of  historical  devel- 
opment." 

We  observe,  then,  that  Engels  understands  the  art  of 
combining  freedom  and  necessity  dialectically,  by  declar- 
ing that  freedom  results  as  a  historical  product  from 
a  study  of  necessity  and  its  social  and  natural  interre- 
lations, in  such  a  way  that  any  one  may  make  the  test 
himself  and  thus  arrive  at  a  scientific  understanding.  In 
the  same  way,  Marx  shows  that  the  power  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  from  natural  necessity  a  social  power,  and  that 
the  past  great  struggles  of  mankind  were  fundamentally 
social  and  class  struggles.  We  thereby  secured  prac- 
tical illustrations  of  the  fertility  of  the  critical  and  in- 
ductive method  taking  its  departure  consciously  from 
facts  and  classifying  them  into  laws,  or  rules.  Both 
Marx  and  Engels  were  enabled  by  this  method  to  secure 
quite  as  exact  results  on  the  field  of  historical,  economic 
and  political  science,  as  natural  science,  strictly  speaking, 
in  its  own  field.  On  the  other  hand,  the  purely  deduc- 
tive method,  resting  on  the  irreconciled  antagonism  of 
a  supernatural  mind  and  natural  matter,  which  made  it 
dualistic,  has  demonstrated  its  scientific  impotence,  be- 
cause it  pretended  to  derive  understanding  in  an  a  priori 
fashion,  that  is,  independently  of  an  analysis  of  the  gen- 
eral laws  of  experienced  facts,  by  means  of  "  pure " 
spirit.  So  far  as  the  past  is  concerned,  we  are  obliged  to 
recognize  that  the  fantasies  generated  by  the  purely  de- 
ductive method  had  a  certain  merit,  because  they  were  a 
necessary  social  product  of  their  time,  which  made  fur- 
ther progress  possible.  But  in  our  day,  these  fanciful 
imaginations  have  become  injurious  and  reactionary  on 
account  of  changed  social  conditions,  and  even  Stirner's 
example  proves  this. 

The  substantiation  of  the  critical  and  inductive  method 


48  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

by  means  of  the  analysis  and  synthesis  of  understanding 
and  nature,  and  the  demonstration  of  its  fertile  and  con- 
sistently monistic  applicability  to  all  social  and  cosmic 
phenomena,  was  the  particular  work  of  Joseph  Dietzgen. 
It  accompanied  the  rise  of  the  proletariat,  which  assisted 
Marx  and  Engels  in  realizing  the  nature  of  social  move- 
ments and  interrelations.  Their  studies  enabled  Dietzgen 
to  make  another  step  forward  by  founding  the  monistic 
conception  of  the  world  on  his  theory  of  understanding. 

Seeing  that  the  consistently  dialectic  and  monistic,  or 
critically  inductive,  method  of  thought  with  its  cosmic 
crowning  was  a  necessary  concomitant  of  the  rise  of  the 
proletariat  as  a  social-economic  class  and  had  for  its 
premise  the  existence  of  such  a  class,  we  are  justified  in 
calling  it  the  proletarian  method.  This  term  is  further- 
more fitting  for  the  reason  that  all  other  social  classes, 
owing  to  their  economic  interests,  are  necessarily  advo- 
cates of  the  dualistic,  or  purely  deductive  method  of 
thought,  in  all  fields  of  abstraction,  such  as  those  of  the 
state,  society,  morality,  freedom,  etc.  If  we  comprise  all 
ruling  classes  on  account  of  the  identity  of  their  interests 
as  opposed  to  those  of  the  proletariat  as  one  bourgeois 
class,  then  we  find  that  this  economic  antagonism  ex- 
presses itself  also  as  an  antagonism  of  the  bourgeois  and 
proletarian  method  of  thought.  On  one  side  we  have  the 
bourgeois,  dualistic,  or  purely  deductive  method,  on  the 
other  the  proletarian,  dialectically  monistic,  or  critically 
inductive  method.  This  applies  even  to  the  most  ad- 
vanced bourgeois  natural  scientists  in  every  case,  where 
they  pass  from  their  specialties  to  the  fields  of  the  so- 
called  science  of  the  intellect. 

How  is  it,  now,  that  a  proletarian  arrives  more  easily 
at  a  consistently  monistic  method  of  thought,  and  at  a 
clearer  understanding  of  social  and  cosmic  interrelations  ? 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  49 

Is  it,  perhaps,  because  proletarians  are  individuals  of 
deeper  insight  and  better  than  men  of  other  classes  ?  By 
no  means.  So  far  as  personality  is  concerned,  a  prole- 
tarian is  equipped  no  better  than  a  bourgeois.  That 
which  distinguishes  him  to  his  advantage  from  a  bour- 
geois is  not  due  to  him  as  an  individual,  but  as  a  member 
of  a  definite  economic  class.  Being  a  member  of  the 
wage-working  class,  of  the  proletariat,  he  is  left  by  virtue 
of  his  economic  condition  with  no  other  inalienable  prop- 
erty but  his  intellectual  and  physical  labor-power.  This 
state  of  things  carries  with  it  the  growing  understanding 
of  the  fact  that  his  might  and  power  are  not  due  to  his 
own  unaided  individuality,  but  to  his  connection  with 
the  labor-power  of  his  class.  The  proletarian  is  thus 
taught  by  his  economic  condition,  that  he  must  use  his 
power  as  a  social  one.  By  this  means  he  becomes  class- 
conscious,  conscious  of  the  importance  and  power  of  his 
class  in  society.  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand,  that  the 
socialist  aim  of  the  socialization  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction must  necessarily  follow  from  this  class-conscious- 
ness. The  bourgeois,  on  the  contrary,  being  an  advo- 
cate of  the  private  ownership  of  the  means  of  production, 
favors  the  opposite  individualistic  representation  of  his 
interests.  If  a  bourgeois  unites  with  the  members  of  his 
class,  he  does  so  merely  under  the  pressure  of  competition 
or  of  the  proletarian  organization,  but  always  with  the 
reservation  of  Stirner  to  the  effect  that  the  "  freedom  " 
of  his  organization  shall  permit  him  at  any  moment  to 
sell  his  shares  and  leave  his  club  as  soon  as  it  inter- 
feres with  his  individualist  principles.  He  is  enabled, 
by  virtue  of  the  above-named  property,  to  avail  himself 
of  the  "  freedom  "  of  his  association,  of  course  at  the 
expense  of  others.  Not  so  the  proletarian.  His  econo- 
mic condition  necessarily  prescribes  to  him  a  permanent 


50  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

association  with  equals,  who  shall  use  the  means  of 
production  co-operatively  for  their  common  interest,  in 
order  to  secure  for  each  member  the  greatest  possible 
happiness  in  the  freest  development  of  his  or  her  physical 
and  intellectual  faculties.  Owing  to  the  fact,  that  no 
society,  not  even  one  without  privileges,  can  exist  without 
definite  regulations,  and  that  among  equals  two  are  more 
powerful  than  one,  the  majority  determines  the  rules  of 
common  work  and  life  for  all.  This  is  resented  by  the 
individualism  of  the  liberals  and  anarchists,  because  they 
want  to  be  more  than  equals,  that  is  to  say,  supermen. 
Unfortunately  for  them,  necessity  enforces  its  decrees 
against  all  pious  wishes.  And  this  necessity  consists  of 
the  fatal  law  compelling  everybody's  dependence  on  so- 
cially useful  labor,  without  which  even  the  greatest 
genius  cannot  live.  The  liberal-anarchist  dream  of  the 
individual  and  his  absolute  property,  free  from  the  bonds 
of  society,  could  not  be  realized,  even  if  nature  were  to 
grant  freely  and  lavishly  the  most  excessive  demands  for 
food,  clothing  and  shelter.  For  even  in  that  case,  we 
should  still  be  bound  to  respect  definite  laws  regulating 
the  association  of  men  in  such  a  way  that  the  development 
and  care  of  all  would  be  promoted,  including  minors  and 
sick,  children  and  aged. 

In  order  to  be  able  to  use  the  proletarian,  consistently 
monistic,  conception  and  its  critically  inductive  method 
with  assurance,  we  must  first  become  aware  of  the  per- 
versity of  the  liberal-anarchist,  self-centered,  dualist  mode 
of  thought,  and  overcome  its  allegedly  aprioristic  and  de- 
ductive method. 

An  isolated  man  in  his  natural  state  is  helpless  against 
the  forces  of  nature,  which  include  other  men  and  wild 
animals.  He  must  rely  for  protection  and  sustenance  on 
the  assistance  of  his  fellowmen.  Therefore  he  associates 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  51 

with  them  from  necessity.  But  the  overpowering  forces 
of  nature,  such  as  fire,  wind,  water,  disease,  inspire  him 
with  fear,  because  he  does  not  understand  and  know  how 
to  control  them.  He  feels  that  they  threaten  his  exis- 
tence. Therefore  he  tries  to  meet  these  mysterious 
forces  by  equally  mysterious  measures.  The  first  result 
of  the  feeling  of  helpless  dependence  on  nature  was  the 
rise  of  religious  cults.  These  cults  remained  natural 
religions,  so  long  as  man  had  not  learned  to  understand 
the  natural  character  of  elementary  forces  and  to  make 
them  tributary  to  himself.  Later  on,  the  dual  nature  of 
individual  power,  which  is  at  the  same  time  individual 
and  socially  cosmic,  tormented  man  with  religious  pains. 
Natural  religion  then  became  spiritual  religion,  trans- 
forming the  idolization  of  nature  and  of  the  present  world 
into  an  idolization  of  the  spirit  and  the  next  world.  His- 
tory teaches  us  in  accord  with  the  theory  of  understand- 
ing, that  this  transformation  took  place  in  the  course  of 
thousands  of  years  as  a  corollary  of  the  transition  from 
communist  property  in  means  of  production  to  private 
property.  So  long  as  men  lived  in  primitive  communities 
and  applied  their  individual  powers  directly  as  social 
ones,  natural  religion  prevailed.  Exchange  of  products 
with  neighboring  communes,  in  other  words,  the  removal 
of  products  outside  of  the  producing  commune,  did  not 
arise,  until  the  individual  communes  had  raised  their  pro- 
ductive power  to  the  point  where  they  could  produce 
more  than  they  needed  for  their  own  consumption.  For 
a  time,  the  commune  remained  the  owner  of  the  articles 
of  exchange  in  the  interest  of  its  members.  But  no 
sooner  did  the  products  find  a  market  outside  of  the 
commune,  than  the  wedge  of  dissolution  was  driven  into 
primitive  communism.  As  a  rule  those  individuals,  who 
had  the  function  of  placating  the  idols,  or  who  had  some 


52  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

other  prominent  social  position,  succeeded  by  means  of 
their  authority  in  managing  the  exchange  of  products  for 
their  own  benefit  and  transforming  themselves  from 
servants  into  masters  of  the  commune,  by  securing  con- 
trol of  the  means  of  production.  The  institution  of  such 
private  ownership  was  naturally  the  end  of  commun- 
ism. The  way  was  cleared  for  the  development  of  the 
production  of  commodities,  leading  toward  modern  capi- 
talism. The  assumption  of  superiority  on  the  part  of  an 
individual  over  society,  as  a  permanent  feature,  was 
made  possible  only  by  private  ownership,  which  on  its 
part  owed  its  rise  to  a  definite  point  of  development  of 
the  productive  forces  of  the  commune.  Thanks  to 
private  property,  the  power  of  the  individual  seemed  to 
be  due  less  to  social  labor  and  to  the  further  interrelation 
with  nature,  than  to  his  own  individuality.  The  articles 
of  exchange  of  such  independent  individuals  necessarily 
assumed  the  character  of  commodities,  owing  to  the  lowly 
developed  state  of  the  productive  forces.  By  this  means, 
the  plain  social  nature  of  individual  labor  in  the  commune 
assumed  the  mysterious  character  of  products  of  indi- 
vidual labor,  of  commodities.  Individualism  triumphed 
over  communism.  The  gods  of  nature  of  consciously 
social  men  gave  way  to  the  supernatural  gods  of  indi- 
viduals misapprehending  their  own  social  and  cosmic  in- 
terrelations. Individual  property  led  to  the  condensation 
of  polytheism  into  monotheism.  Finally  the  "  pure " 
spirit  of  the  individual  became  the  god  of  "  enlightened  " 
capitalism.  Just  as  the  virgin  Mary  of  the  catholics 
gave  birth  to  Christ  without  having  become  pregnant,  so 
pure  reason  begets  thought  without  being  impregnated 
by  the  objects  of  sense  perception.  Thus  results  the  un- 
conditional and  aprioristic  "  science,"  which  is  still  being 
taught  quite  generally  by  the  modern  universities.  The 


THE  PROLETARIAN    METHOD  53 

characteristic  mark  of  this  science  is  that  it  takes  its  de- 
parture from  the  principle  of  pure  spirit.  Hence  it  re- 
mains theological  and  theosophical.  We  propose  to  con- 
front it  later  with  proletarian  science,  which  takes  its 
departure  consciously  from  verifiable  and  matter  of  fact 
premises. 

The  indissoluble  interrelation  of  the  individual  with 
society  rests,  according  to  us,  on  his  helplessness,  if  left 
with  no  other  resource  for  his  maintenance  and  defense 
but  his  own  labor-power.  Man  is,  therefore,  compelled 
to  seek  the  assistance  of  other  men.  This  dependence 
explains  the  inevitable  social  nature  of  individual  labor- 
power.  Marx  calls  the  understanding  of  this  nature  of 
individual  labor-power  the  essential  point  which  is  re- 
quired for  an  intelligent  discussion  of  political  economy. 
It  is  the  great  merit  of  Marx  and  Engels  to  have  substan- 
tiated and  propagated  this  knowledge.  This  is  the  basis 
of  the  analyses  in  Marx's  "  Capital  ",  this  reveals  the  dual 
nature  of  private  property,  this  furnishes  the  key  for  an 
understanding  of  the  nature  of  commodities,  value, 
money,  capital,  and  of  the  entire  social  science.  It  also 
lays  bare  the  kernel  of  such  terms  as  morality,  right, 
state,  authority,  etc. 

It  was  the  misfortune  of  Stirner  to  regard  these  terms 
as  arbitrary  catchwords,  while  the  Marxian  Dietzgen 
knows  how  to  show  up  the  sober  social  nature  of  these 
spooks.  With  regard  to  morality,  he  says  in  his 
"  Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work  " :  "  Morality  is  the 
aggregate  of  the  most  contradictory  ethical  laws  which 
serve  the  common  purpose  of  regulating  the  conduct 
of  man  toward  himself  and  others  in  such  a  way 
that  the  future  is  considered  as  well  as  the  present,  the 
one  as  well  as  the  other,  the  individual  as  well  as  the 
genus.  The  individual  man  finds  himself  lacking,  inade- 


54  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

quate,  limited,  in  many  ways.  He  requires  for  his  com- 
plement other  people,  society,  and  must,  therefore,  live 
and  let  live.  The  mutual  concessions  which  arise  out  of 
these  relative  needs  are  called  morality." 

"  The  inadequacy  of  the  single  individual,  the  need 
of  association,  is  the  basis  and  cause  of  man's  considera- 
tion for  his  neighbors,  of  morality.  Now,  since  the  one 
who  feels  this  need,  man,  is  necessarily  an  individual,  it 
follows  that  his  need  must  likewise  be  individual  and 
more  or  less  intensive.  And  since  my  neighbors  are 
necessarily  different  from  me,  it  requires  different  con- 
siderations to  meet  their  needs.  Concrete  man  needs  a 
concrete  morality.  Just  as  abstract  and  meaningless  as 
the  concept  of  mankind  in  general  is  that  of  absolute 
morality,  and  the  ethical  laws  derived  from  this  vague 
idea  are  quite  as  unpractical  and  unsuccessful.  Man  is  a 
living  personality,  whose  welfare  and  purpose  is  embod- 
ied within  himself,  who  has  between  himself  and  the 
world  nothing  but  his  needs  as  a  mediator,  who  owes  no 
allegiance  to  any  law  whatever  from  the  moment  that  it 
contravenes  his  needs.  The  moral  duty  of  an  individual 
never  exceeds  his  interests.  The  only  thing  which  ex- 
ceeds those  interests  is  the  material  power  of  the  gener- 
ality over  the  individuality." 

"  If  we  regard  it  as  the  function  of  reason  to  ascertain 
that  which  is  morally  right,  a  uniform  scientific  result 
may  be  produced,  if  we  agree  at  the  outset  on  the  persons, 
conditions,  or  limits  within  which  the  universal  moral 
right  is  to  be  determined ;  in  other  words,  wre  may  ac- 
complish something  practical,  if  we  drop  the  idea  of  abso- 
lute right  and  search  for  definite  rights  applicable  to 
well-defined  purposes  by  clearly  marking  the  boundaries 
of  our  problem.  The  contradiction  in  the  various 
standards  of  morality,  and  the  many  opposing  solutions 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  55 

of  this  contradiction,  are  due  to  a  misunderstanding  of 
the  problem.  To  look  for  right  without  a  given  quantity 
of  sense  perceptions,  without  some  definite  working  ma- 
terial, is  an  act  of  speculative  reason,  which  pretends  to 
explore  nature  without  the  use  of  senses.  The  attempt 
to  arrive  at  a  positive  determination  of  morality  by  pure 
perception  and  pure  reason  is  a  manifestation  of  the 
philosophical  faith  in  understanding  a  priori." 

And  with  regard  to  right,  Dietzgen  writes  in  the  same 
Work :  "  Reason  cannot  discover  within  itself  any  posi- 
tive rights  or  absolutely  moral  codes  any  more  than  any 
other  speculative  truth.  It  cannot  estimate  how  essential 
or  unessential  a  thing  is,  or  classify  the  quantity  of  its 
concrete  and  general  characters,  until  it  has  some  per- 
ceptible material  to  work  upon.  The  understanding  of 
the  right,  or  of  the  moral,  like  all  understanding,  strives 
to  single  out  the  general  characteristics  of  its  object. 
But  the  general  is  only  possible  within  certain  definite 
limits,  it  exists  only  as  the  general  qualities  of  some  con- 
crete and  perceptible  object.  And  if  any  one  tries  to  rep- 
resent some  maxim,  some  law,  some  right,  in  the  light  of 
an  absolute  maxim,  law,  or  right,  he  forgets  this  necessary 
limitation.  Absolute  right  is  merely  a  meaningless  con- 
cept, and  it  does  not  assume  even  a  vague  meaning,  until 
it  is  understood  to  stand  for  the  right  of  mankind  in 
general.  But  morality,  or  the  determination  of  that  which 
is  right,  has  a  practical  purpose.  Yet,  if  we  accept  the 
general  and  unconditional  right  of  mankind  as  a  moral 
right,  we  necessarily  miss  our  practical  aim.  An  act, 
or  a  line  of  action,  which  is  universally  or  everywhere 
right,  requires  no  law  for  its  enforcement,  for  it  will 
recommend  itself.  It  is  only  the  determined  and  limited 
law,  adapted  to  certain  persons,  classes,  nations,  times, 
or  circumstances,  which  has  any  practical  value,  and  it  is 


56  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

so  much  more  practical,  the  more  defined,  exact,  precise 
and  the  less  general  it  is." 

What  signifies,  furthermore,  the  state  which  Stirner 
denies  offhand  and  which  individuals  are  supposed  to  be 
able  to  blow  over  by  sheer  will-power  ?  It  is  well  known 
to  be  nothing  else  but  the  executive  committee  of  the 
ruling  minority,  who  can  impose  their  rule,  thanks  to  the 
private  ownership  in  means  required  for  the  production 
of  the  material  necessities  of  life,  so  long  as  this  rule  and 
this  private  ownership  are  necessary  for  the  development 
of  the  productive  forces  to  a  climax  where  the  develop- 
ment of  personality  becomes  possible  for  all.  With  the 
advent  of  this  climax,  and  after  the  victorious  struggle 
of  the  proletariat,  driven  forward  by  its  material  require- 
ments, minority  rule,  or  the  state,  disappears  and  gives 
way  to  universal  suffrage  and  rule.  Where  all  rule,  no- 
body serves,  and  vice  versa,  where  all  serve,  nobody  rules. 
We  refer  the  reader,  who  would  inform  himself  or  herself 
further  about  this  point,  to  Kautsky's  "  Erfurt  Program  " 
or  to  Marx's  "  Capital."  These  works  will  throw  a 
bright  light  on  some  more  catchwords  of  Stirner. 

The  elaboration  and  demonstration  of  the  following 
axioms :  The  human  individual  is  a  social  laborer,  and : 
Human  labor  is  a  social  organism,  which  determines  the 
nature  of  the  interior  world  of  the  individual  member, 
that  is,  his  consciousness  and  mental  activity  in  all  lines 
of  thought  such  as  religion,  ethics,  law,  politics,  science 
and  art,  by  producing  changes  in  the  economic  nature  of 
the  society  and  the  world  surrounding  him, —  are  the 
fundament  of  Marxism  in  a  strict  sense.  They  furnish 
the  key  for  an  understanding  of  critical  communism  as 
a  science  of  society  and  a  conception  of  history. 

Social  labor  produces  the  requirements  for  the  exist- 
ence of  individuals.  The  organization  of  the  productive 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  57 

process  is  determined  by  the  available  forces  of  produc- 
tion, that  is  to  say,  by  the  means  and  methods  of  produc- 
tion. The  degree  of  development  of  these  determines 
the  character  of  a  society  and  its  members.  It  explains 
the  introduction  of  private  property,  slavery,  feudalism, 
and  capitalism.  It  justifies  on  the  ground  of  historical 
necessity  the  rule  of  minorities  as  well  as  the  abolition 
of  class-rule  by  the  proletariat.  We  are  indebted  for  this 
knowledge  to  Marxism  in  the  strict  sense. 

However,  this  scientific  theory,  known  as  Historical 
Materialism,  which  is  substantiated  by  a  critical  investiga- 
tion of  any  period  where  sufficient  economic  facts  were 
so  far  available  and  looked  into,  does  not  satisfactorily 
reply  to  the  question,  why  mental  activity  is  to  such  a 
determinating  degree  influenced  by  economics.  Is  our 
mind  not  free  to  think  as  it  pleases?  Such,  at  least,  is 
the  belief  of  most  people  and  even  of  many  socialists  who, 
therefore,  consider  Marxism  rather  as  one-sided  and  dog- 
matic. 

Thanks  to'  the  epistemological  researches  of  Joseph 
Dietzgen,  Marxism  was  here  again  confirmed  and,  be- 
sides, expanded.  It  now  culminates  in  these  additional 
proofs :  The  force  of  thought  operates  only  by  means  of 
an  inseparable  interrelation  with  material  furnished  by 
sense  perceptions.  This  material  exists  not  only  in 
thought,  but  also  in  an  objective  and  perceptible  form  as  a 
part  of  the  cosmos,  that  universal  organism  which  is  the 
premise  of  all  others.  Hence  all  phenomena,  including 
the  force  of  thought  and  the  human  individual  endowed 
with  it,  are  organic  members  of  the  cosmos,  and  this  nat- 
ural, infinite,  and  organic  interrelation  is  the  long-sought 
final  and  unitary  explanation  for  all  phenomena.  By 
substantiating  these  theses  with  his  critique  of  under- 
standing, Dietzgen  has  furnished  the  reply  to  the  ques- 


58  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

tion,  why  it  is  that  within  the  universal  interrelation 
economics  has  a  predominating  influence  over  mental 
activity.  In  this  way  Dietzgen  deepened  and  perfected 
the  Marxian  conception  of  social  evolution  and  elaborated 
it  into  a  scientific  conception  of  the  world.  Herein  lies 
the  significance  of  Dietzgen's  life's  work. 

Dietzgen  left  no  bulky  volumes  behind  him.  He  was 
not  a  professional  writer,  and  the  struggle  for  existence 
granted  him  no  leisure,  save  for  occasional  writings.  So 
much  the  more  valuable  is  the  little  that  he  wrote.  The 
fact  that  his  importance  for  Marxism  has  not  been  duly 
recognized  so  far  is  partly  attributable  to  Dietzgen's 
great  bashfulness  and  reserve,  and  to  his  excessive  con- 
fidence in  the  perspicacity  of  his  readers.  Thus,  in  all 
his  works,  more  particularly  in  his  "  Excursions  of  a 
Socialist  into  the  Domain  of  the  Theory  of  Understand- 
ing "  and  in  "  The  Outcome  of  Philosophy,"  he  gives  any 
reader  not  familiar  with  the  positive  work  of  classic 
philosophers  the  impression  that  he  is  discussing  them 
rather  than  presenting  his  own  researches.  Neverthe- 
less, the  soberly  scientific  and  cosmic  theory  of  thought 
and  conception  of  the  universe  presented  in  these  works 
of  his  are  the  original  achievement  of  Dietzgen,  for  which 
his  predecessors  have  naturally  built  the  steps,  without, 
however,  climbing  to  the  height  of  this  thinker.  In  order 
that  Dietzgen's  cosmic  and  monistic  dialectics  and  its 
particular  method  of  thought  and  enlightment  may  be 
used  in  the  service  of  the  proletariat  more  than  heretofore, 
it  seems  to  us  appropriate  to  emphasize  at  this  point,  that 
they  are  a  valuable  perfection,  supplement,  and  therefore 
development,  of  Marxism.  This  is  not  the  place  for  a 
complete  demonstration  of  our  claim.  Here  we  simply 
desire  to  make  use  of  the  outlines  of  Dietzgen's  con- 
sistent monism  for  an  explanation  of  such  terms  as  re- 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  59 

Hgion,  conscience,  infinity,  and  conception  of  the  world, 
for  which  Stirner  and  the  bourgeoisie  vainly  sought  a 
clear  and  scientific  understanding. 

Whoever  wishes  to  get  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
world  and  its  phenomena,  must  first  grasp  the  relation  of 
the  human  individual  to  nature.  To  this  end,  again,  it 
is  indispensable  that  we  should  have  a  clear  perception 
of  the  force,  by  means  of  which  we  seek  understanding. 
This  is  the  force  of  understanding  and  thought,  the 
human  mind. 

An  analysis  of  this  force  shows,  that  we  cannot  think 
without  any  material  furnished  either  in  the  present  or 
the  past  by  sense-perceptions.  Thinking  signifies,  there- 
fore, to  operate  the  force  of  thought  by  means  of  mate- 
rial furnished  by  present  sense-perceptions  or  by  means 
of  material  of  past  sense-perceptions  stored  away  in 
memory.  This  material  is  an  indispensable  premise  of 
thought. 

This  fact  may  be  substantiated  by  every  one  who  will 
test  himself  and  see  whether  he  or  she  can  formulate  any 
thought,  which  did  not  originally  arise  in  some  way  out 
of  the  contact  of  the  mind  with  some  material  perception. 
If  any  one  should  present  to  us  any  term,  which  we  can- 
not trace  to  some  perceptible  fact,  then  we  cannot  get 
any  meaning  out  of  it  aside  from  the  fact  that  we  hear  or 
read  the  mere  word  and  later  on  repeat  it  in  a  similar 
connection  without  regard  to  other  sense-perception  and 
without  formulating  any  clear  idea,  until  we  have  experi- 
enced the  perceptible  mate  of  the  mere  term  in  some  form. 
Our  thought  becomes  so  much  clearer  and  more  scientific, 
the  more  consciously  it  takes  its  departure  from  the  crit- 
ique of  experienced  facts,  and  vice  versa  it  becomes  so 
much  more  confused,  the  less  we  stick  to  experience  and 
yield  to  imagination,  that  is  to  say,  the  more  rein  we  give 


'O6  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

to  inexperienced  and  therefore  inexact  reasoning  without 
any  conscious  touch  of  reality.  For  this  reason  thoughts 
which  are  suggested  to  children,  such  as  morality,  lib- 
erty, justice,  god,  and  devil,  have  such  powerful  influence 
over  their  minds,  the  same  as  fairy  tales,  because  children 
are  especially  apt  to  assimilate  ideas  without  criticism, 
on  account  of  their  untrained  faculty  of  thought  and 
their  limited  experience.  What  is  true  in  this  respect  of 
children,  applies  also  to  nations  in  their  childhood  —  fan- 
tastic thought  appeals  to  them  more  strongly  than  a  sci- 
entific reference  to  verifiable  facts. 

Though  Neo-Kantians  and  garret-philosophers  claim 
that  the  world  is  merely  a  matter  of  consciousness,  we 
know  now  that  this  is  but  a  half-truth,  for  the  world  of 
phenomena  exists  not  only  in  our  consciousness,  but  also 
outside  of  it  in  perceptible  reality,  otherwise  it  would  not 
exist  for  us  at  all.  Consciousness  does  not  register  any- 
thing that  has  not  been  supplied  by  sense-perceptions. 
Indeed,  the  universal  being,  or  the  universe,  consisting  of 
intellectually  and  sensually  perceivable  phenomena,  is 
the  primary  fact.  It  is  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  product 
of  man,  but  on  the  contrary,  man  is  the  product  of  the 
universe  and  to  this  extent  the  secondary  fact. 

We  know  this  to  be  true  as  positively  as  we  can  know 
anything.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  evident,  that  we  human 
beings  must  first  exist,  before  we  can  perceive  any  phe- 
nomenon. We  cannot  entertain  the  idea  to  attempt, 
without  the  premise  of  human  existence,  an  analysis  of 
the  way  in  which  the  world  of  phenomena  affects  us,  and 
to  find  out  whether  it  exists  merely  in  us  as  the  content 
of  our  consciousness,  or  also  outside  of  us  as  the  thing 
which  determines  our  consciousness  in  the  last  analysis. 
Otherwise  we  should  not  be  trying  to  solve  a  problem, 
but  suffer  from  insanity.  The  existence  of  man  is,  there- 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  fa 

fore,  the  first  premise  of  human  thought  and  research. 

How  do  we  prove,  then,  that,  aside  from  the  existence 
of  man,  the  other  premise  of  the  psycho-physical  interre- 
lation, or  of  the  inseparable  connection  of  mind  and 
senses  characteristic  of  all  thought,  is  the  existence  of 
mater'al  furnished  by  sense  perceptions?  That  this  ma- 
terial does  not  exist  merely  in  human  consciousness,  but 
also  has  its  own  objective  existence  and  is  even  thd 
primary  fact  which  produces  men  and  their  consciousness 
as  secondary  phenomena? 

We  answer:  Our  proof  is  given  in  no  other  way 
than  all  proofs  are,  namely,  by  reference  to  facts 
Which  are  universally  verifiable  by  experience.  Such 
facts  would  not  exist,  and  there  could  be  neither  any 
possibility  of  understanding  nor  any  science  in  that  case, 
unless  there  were  phenomena  outside  of  us  which  exist 
independently  of  individual  man,  although  they  can  not 
exist  for  mankind  independently  of  human  consciousness. 
It  is  due  only  to  this  obvious  fact  that  one  man  can  con- 
vince another  of  the  reality  of  sorn^  objective  phenomenon 
and  of  its  existence  independently  of  himself,  by  making 
another  perceive  and  experience  the  same  phenomenon 
through  his  senses  and  intellect.  We  know  and  prove 
furthermore,  that  this  same  phenomenon  still  remains 
and  continues  to  exist  outside  of  our  mind,  even  if  we, 
as  concrete  individuals,  do  not  remember  and  perceive  it 
any  more  with  our  senses. 

Owing  to  the  fact  that  man  has  the  intellectual  faculty 
of  dispensing  later  on  with  the  objective  form  of  some 
phenomenon  previously  experienced  at  a  certain  time  and 
place,  and  of  studying  its  relations,  especially  as  regards 
its  origin  and  end,  without  further  actual  contact  with  it, 
and  seeing  that  individual  phenomena  are  relative  and 
perishable  as  compared  to  the  absolute  universe,  philoso- 


62  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

phers  have  hitherto  attempted  to  disregard  also  the  prem- 
ise of  this  universe  and  to  penetrate  with  their  studies 
even  beyond  it.  When  they  did  not  succeed  in  this,  they 
did  not  overcome  their  traditional  theological  bias  in  order 
to  arrive  at  the  plain  understanding  that  the  absolute  uni- 
verse is  the  fundamental  premise  of  their  individual  ex- 
istence and  their  force  of  thought  as  well  as  the  premise 
of  the  concrete  existence  and  life  of  every  individual 
phenomenon.  On  the  contrary,  their  failure  induced 
them  to  return  to  the  mere  faith  in  the  supernatural 
existence  of  a  god  and  finally  to  the  faith  in  a  super- 
natural pure  spirit.  Particularly  since  the  time  of  Des- 
cartes (Cartesius)  the  pure  spirit  was  elevated  to  the 
position  of  the  only  and  actual  being,  while  all  other 
beings,  things  or  phenomena  were  reduced  to  products  of 
thought.  The  senses  then  appeared  in  the  role  of  non- 
essential  tools  of  the  spirit,  transmitting  nothing  but 
imaginary  realities  which  had  no  existence,  save  in 
thought.  This  is  the  theological  or  dualist  conception, 
for  since  it  contradicts  the  experienced  mind  and  all  veri- 
fiable facts,  and  is,  therefore,  opposed  to  all  science,  it 
necessarily  had  to  seek  refuge  in  a  divine  spirit,  or  trans- 
form the  human  mind  into  an  object  of  supernatural 
faith.  By  this  means  absolute  dualism,  or  the  contradic- 
tion between  thinking  and  being,  was  established.  Dietz- 
gen  finally  solved  this  unreconciled  contradiction,  by 
pointing  out  the  universally  verifiable  fact,  that  every 
individual  phenomenon,  including  man  and  his  force  of 
thought,  is  not  of  itself  whatever  it  is,  but  exists  only  in 
and  derives  its  particularity  from  the  connection  with  all 
other  phenomena  of  nature,  so  that  this  natural  and  uni- 
versal interrelation,  this  universal  being,  is  recognized  as 
the  nbsolute  and  uniform  premise  for  every  concrete 
phenomenon.  Just  as  in  a  mathematical  problem  the 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  63 

solution  is  contained  in  the  given  magnitudes,  without 
which  the  problem  could  not  be  solved  at  all,  so  the  ex- 
istence of  the  universal  being,  known  as  Cosmos,  Uni- 
verse or  Nature,  is  the  premise  for  the  solution  of  every 
problem  encountered  by  human  beings.  The  possibility 
of  understanding  must  be  contained  in  the  germ  in  human 
consciousness,  for  otherwise  a  more  developed  conscious- 
ness could  never  have  arrived  at  it.  Man  cannot  attempt 
to  ask  himself  questions  about  the  nature  of  conscious- 
ness, until  this  consciousness  has  developed.  Not  until 
man  realized  after  many  researches  that  he  would  have 
to  make  a  special  study  of  consciousness,  did  he  perceive, 
that  the  process  of  thinking  takes  its  departure  from 
some  given  phenomenon  furnished  by  sense-perceptions 
in  such  a  way,  that  it  exists  objectively  for  us  as  well  as 
for  all  others  whose  attention  is  called  to  it.  And  if  man 
further  analyzes  a  given  phenomenon,  he  finds  that,  on 
the  one  hand,  it  does  not  enter  into  his  thoughts  in  all 
its  details  without  leaving  anything  unknown  about  it, 
but  rather  retains  its  separate  existence  and  can  be  fur- 
ther perceived  by  us  and  others,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  every  individual  phenomenon  does  not  exist  in  itself 
alone,  but  is  always  a  link  in  that  chain  of  existence 
which  we  call  the  universe.  It  is  this  chain  of  existence 
against  which  the  individualist-anarchist  bourgeois  phi- 
losophers, whose  starting  point  is  the  free  will  and  inde- 
pendent mind,  are  rebelling.  They  do  not  like  to  aban- 
don their  self-centered  aprioristic  sailing  of  the  clouds, 
nor  trace  their  steps  down  to  the  universal  being.  In 
such  fashion  they  come  by  their  supernatural  aim,  the 
faith  in  some  spook  by  which  their  own  imagination 
deceives  them.  We,  on  the  other  hand,  can  lead  them 
easily  ad  absurdum,  for  we  have  but  to  remember  that 
thinking  is  the  consciousness  of  being,  an  inseparable 


64  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

connection  with  some  object  outside  of  thought,  the  ex- 
istence of  which  may  be  verified  by  sense-perceptions. 
Both  this  phenomenon  and  our  faculty  of  thought  must  be 
given,  before  we  can  think.  But  if  we  have  recognized 
that  the  universal  existence  outside  of  our  force  of 
thought  is  the  absolute  premise  for  our  thought,  then  it 
is  simply  inane  to  attempt  to  go  with  our  mind  beyond 
this  universal  being  to  where  there  are  neither  phenomena 
nor  thought.  In  order  not  to  become  inane,  we  must, 
therefore,  make  our  peace  with  the  universal  existence 
and  rest  content  with  it.  We  know,  then,  that  this  exist- 
ence is  the  absolute  truth ;  we  no  longer  search  for  ab- 
stract truth  in  general,  but  rather  for  the  relative  truth  of 
given  phenomena  by  extracting  the  general  unity  from 
the  manifold  contradictions,  by  separating  the  rule  from 
the  exceptions.  And  these  scientific  truths  we  find  ex- 
clusively by  a  conscious  reference  to  such  verifiable  parts 
of  the  universe  as  become  the  object  of  our  study. 
We  leave  pure  speculation  and  faith  to  the  philosophers 
and  theologians,  and  prefer  to  study  and  work  by  means 
of  mind  and  senses.  The  theological  conscience  is  seen 
to  be  nothing  else  but  a  vague  and  unconscious  memory 
of  conceptions  that  were  originally  gained  in  a  psycho- 
physical  manner.  Therefore  it  belongs  in  the  same  class 
with  faith  and  fantasy,  and  is  called  conscience  as  dis- 
tinguished from  science. 

The  fact  that  the  human  mind  is  compelled  to  connect 
itself  with  definite  parts  of  the  universe  and  take  its  de- 
parture from  them  in  the  quest  after  the  general,  the 
truth,  the  rule,  or  the  law,  implies  that  we  construct  the 
concept  of  a  universe  ourselves,  recognizing  that  it  con- 
sists of  parts  which  are  organically  arranged  in  time  and 
space  either  side  by  side  or  one  following  the  other,  limit- 
ing and  supplementing  one  another.  We  understand, 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  65 

then,  that  the  universe  is  the  all-combining  and  all-em- 
bracing organic  being,  and  that  the  mind,  or  conscious- 
ness, is  one  of  its  parts  endowed  with  the  peculiar  power 
of  serving  as  an  instrument  of  orientation  in  the  general 
interrelation.  The  universal  existence  is  therefore  recog- 
nized as  the  fundamental  and  absolute  premise  of  our 
mind,  and  of  all  other  phenomena,  substances,  or  forces. 
We  can  affirm  this  in  such  a  positive  manner,  because  we 
found  by  the  above  test  of  the  force  of  understanding 
that  it  can  operate  only  by  means  of  given  natural  origins 
and  facts,  and  that  these  origins  and  facts  are  members, 
together  with  the  subjective  mind,  of  the  infinite  inter- 
relations of  nature,  as  any  one  may  ascertain  for  himself. 

Now  we  are  at  last  done  with  speculations  about  abso- 
lute truth.  For  we  have  found  it  to  be  the  absolute  uni- 
verse, the  aggregate  relations  of  all  phenomena  per- 
ceptible to  psycho-physical  man.  Whatever  does  not 
partake  of  the  psycho-physical  nature  of  the  universe, 
cannot  exist  for  us.  All  spooks  disband  and  stand  re- 
vealed as  products  of  fantasy,  that  is  to  say,  as  uncon- 
scious connections  of  the  mind  with  objective  sense- 
perceptions,  present  or  past,  provided  we  test  them  by  a 
conscious  combination  of  the  mind  with  the  senses. 

The  absolute  and  sober  truth  of  the  universe  is  recog- 
nized as  the  absolute  eternity,  the  infinite,  all-embracing, 
and  all-combining,  the  thing  independent  of  space  and 
time,  the  beginning  and  end  of  all  phenomena.  The  uni- 
verse has  all  the  attributes  of  divinity  without  its  dualism, 
without  that  faith  which  would  believe  in  a  supernatural 
mind  and  a  supernatural  world  apart  from  the  natural 
mind  and  the  natural  world. 

Whoever  looks  about  with  open  eyes,  sees  that  every 
phenomenon  of  nature  is  connected  organically  with 
innumerable  others.  Every  one  of  them  has  countless 


66  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

causes,  but  only  one  general  cause,  the  universe.  In  the 
universe  we  possess  at  last  the  reliable,  monistic,  and, 
therefore,  logical  beginning  and  end  of  a  consistent  con- 
ception of  the  world,  which  harmonizes  with  all  the  re- 
sults of  science. 

What,  then,  does  our  thinking,  understanding,  ex- 
plaining, etc.,  accomplish?  Evidently  nothing  else 
than  that  it  explains  the  cosmic  phenomena  in  their 
direct  and  indirect  interrelations,  classifies  them  and 
arranges  them  for  our  orientation  and  use.  The 
mind  operates  always  post  factum,  that  is  to  say, 
after  having  been  furnished  with  material  by  ob- 
jective sense-perceptions.  Even  prophesying  has  any 
meaning  only  when  it  is  a  conclusion  from  definite 
premises.  Thinking,  understanding,  explaining,  realiz- 
ing, are  so  many  terms  for  a  formal  classification  and 
description  of  the  interrelations  of  given  phenomena. 
We  think  and  understand  truly  when  we  know  how  to 
distinguish  the  essential  or  general  from  the  unessential 
or  exceptional  of  any  given  object.  And  since  objective 
reality  is  the  final  test,  any  one  can  verify  whether  he  has 
been  thinking  truly,  as  soon  as  he  compares  his  thought 
with  the  available  material  of  the  studied  object.  When- 
ever we  can  do  this,  we  are  independent  of  any  and  all 
authority. 

We  declare  that  the  universe  is  an  organism,  because 
we  find  it  to  be  a  universal  fact  that  every  phenomenon  is 
that  which  it  is  not  of  itself,  but  by  grace  of  its  inter- 
relation with  the  universe.  A  phenomenon  is  so  much 
better  understood  the  more  we  know  about  its  interrela- 
tions. These  change  continually  in  time  and  space,  hence 
a  phenomenon  does  likewise.  On  account  of  this  eternal 
movement,  we  are  compelled  to  detach  any  phenomenon, 
which  we  desire  to  study,  from  out  the  flow  of  interrela- 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  67 

tions,  to  fix  it  in  time  and  space.  By  this  means  we 
ascertain  its  direct  relations  and  secure,  as  it  were,  a 
flashlight-picture  of  it  as  a  reference  specimen  for  fur- 
ther studies.  In  this  way  we  obtain  terms  for  concepts 
and  boundaries,  or  distinctions,  in  the  infinite  universe. 
It  is  the  cosmic  and  organic  interrelation  of  simultaneous 
and  successive,  eternally  changing  phenomena,  which  ex- 
plains the  operations  of  the  force  of  thought,  showing 
that  this  force  does  not  only  create  distinctions,  but  is 
also  a  unifying  force  aside  from  its  discriminating  nature. 

Being  a  part  of  the  cosmos,  the  human  mind  is  cosmic, 
partakes  of  the  eternal  and  infinite  nature  of  the  cosmos, 
the  same  as  every  substance  and  force.  This  universal 
miraculousness  is  natural  for  the  entire  cosmos.  How- 
ever, as  a  cosmic  member  associated  with  other  cosmic 
members,  and  compared  to  the  cosmos  as  a  whole,  the 
mind  is  limited  in  space  and  time  and  perishable.  Only 
the  cosmos  as  a  whole  remains  unalterable  and  stable  in 
spite  of  the  eternal  transformation  of  its  parts.  The  in- 
destructibility of  matter  and  the  conservation  of  energy 
are  explained  by  the  constancy  of  the  cosmos.  This  is  a 
demand  of  reason  due  to  critical  experience. 

The  inductive  critique  of  the  force  of  thought  leads  us 
to  a  cosmic  dialectics,  to  an  organic  interrelation  and  in- 
terpenetration  of  all  phenomena.  It  teaches  us  to  con- 
ceive of  every  phenomenon  as  an  organic  part  of  the 
cosmos,  and  to  make  this  our  point  of  departure  and  of 
return  as  the  given  absolute  truth  and  the  uniform  basis. 
The  cosmos  does  not  assume  the  aspect  of  an  aprioristic 
fantasy,  because  it  is  the  all-embracing  and  sober  reality 
verifiable  by  every  and  all  experience.  The  concept  of 
the  cosmic  organism,  being  consciously  constructed  out 
of  this  reality,  furnishes  us  with  a  basis  for  a  consistent 
monism.  It  leaves  no  room  for  any  other  but  the  one 


68  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

and  natural  cosmos,  which  is  the  arch-premise  and  im- 
passable boundary  of  our  mind.  To  attempt  to  go  be- 
yond this  ultimate  boundary  of  existence  is  as  foolish  as 
the  idea  of  ascertaining  the  nature  of  consciousness  with- 
out any  existence.  Only  he  who  attempts  the  one  can 
attempt  the  other,  in  order  to  find  in  the  fantasies  of  pure 
faith  a  fool's  consolation.  One  who  thinks  like  that  is 
nearer  to  unconsciousness  than  to  consciousness,  and  this 
is  no  compliment  for  his  intellectual  force. 

"And   then,    above   all   other   things, 
Give  metaphysics  due  concern. 
Then  strive  to  grasp  by  deep  reflection 
What  is  beyond  the  mind's  conception." 

These  words  characterize  the  essence  of  the  purely 
deductive  and  unconditional  "  science."  Or,  to  use  an- 
other variation: 

"I  tell  you  this:     A  man  who  speculates 
Is  like  a  beast  upon  some  arid  heath, 
Led  in  a  circle  by  some  evil  sprite, 
While  round  about  is  pasture  fresh  and  green." 

The  human  mind  can  form  abstract  concepts  only  by 
combining  impressions  derived  from  concrete  objects  and 
ascertaining  in  what  respect  they  are  generally  identical. 
Hence  we  do  not  fully  understand  abstract  concepts,  until 
we  have  had  practical  intercourse  with  the  concrete  phe- 
nomena which  are  their  premise.  All  concepts  are  more 
or  less  abstract  and  flexible.  Because  the  parts  of  the 
universe,  and  our  experiences  relating  to  them,  are  in  a 
process  of  continuous  development,  our  concepts  of  them 
likewise  remain  fluid  and  flexible.  The  green  pasture  of 
the  concrete  phenomena  turns  into  the  arid  heath  of  ab- 
stract concepts  as  soon  as  we  forget  the  interrelation  of 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  69 

the  latter  with  the  former.  The  fact  that  this  interrelation 
has  been  overlooked  in  the  first  place,  is  due  to  the  cir- 
cumstance that  man,  overawed  by  the  supreme  power  of 
nature  and  the  wealth  of  its  phenomena,  and  feeling  his 
dependence  upon  them,  mistook  the  way  of  fantasy  and 
faith  for  the  only  one  which  would  lead  to  the  blessed- 
ness of  an  explanation  of  the  world  satisfactory  to  the 
mind  and  heart.  The  faculty  of  memory,  which  per- 
mitted him  to  retain  and  collect  past  impressions,  forsook 
him  when  it  would  have  been  proper  for  him  to  recollect 
the  objective  and  perceptible  origin  of  all  impressions, 
especially  after  such  great  abstracta  as  god,  morality,  lib- 
erty, immortality,  etc.,  had  been  instilled  in  his  mind  with- 
out criticism  for  generations  in  the  shape  of  dogmas  or 
eternal  truths.  It  was  not  until  he  had  reached  a  high 
stage  of  development,  when  an  understanding  of  social 
and  natural  interrelations  had  convinced  him  more  and 
more  of  the  passing  nature  and  relative  truth  of  all  dog- 
mas, that  he  restored  consciously  this  psycho-physical 
connection  on  one  field  of  research  after  another.  Many 
sciences  had  far  advanced  before  the  theory  of  under- 
standing became  scientific.  An  epoch-making  advance 
in  this  direction  is  due  to  Kant,  who  ascertained  that  ex- 
perience, that  is  to  say,  the  interrelation  of  mind  with 
sense-perceptions,  is  the  indispensable  premise  of  all  sci- 
ence. But  Kant  left  to  faith  the  task  of  replying  to  so- 
called  final  questions  concerning  the  origin  and  end  of  the 
universe  and  man,  because  he  did  not  acquire  a  clear 
understanding  of  the  relation  of  man  to  the  cosmos. 
Owing  to  historical  conditions,  he  was  still  so  envel- 
oped by  traditional  faith,  particularly  the  faith  in  eternal 
moral  law,  that  he  did  not  even  attempt  to  employ  the 
only  scientific  method,  namely,  that  of  consciously  con- 
necting the  mind  with  sense-perceptions,  for  the  study 


7O  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

of  metaphysical  riddles.  What  Kant  failed  to  accom- 
plish was  carried  further  by  Dietzgen,  thanks  to  the 
higher  social  stage  on  which  he  stood.  Dietzgen's  "  The 
Nature  of  Human  Brain  Work  "  is  devoted  to  the  analy- 
sis of  the  scientific  method  of  thought.  In  this  little 
work  he  ascertains  that  the  inductive  or  empirical  method 
of  thought  is  the  one  peculiar  to  the  force  of  thought, 
that  we  cannot  in  reality  think  in  any  other  way,  but 
merely  imagine  we  are  doing  so,  because  meditation  is 
nothing  else  but  associative  elaboration,  by  means  of  mem- 
ory, of  the  mental  material  obtained  originally  from  ob- 
jective sense-perceptions.  But  apart  from  many  allu- 
sions, Dietzgen  did  not  go  very  far  beyond  the  stand- 
point of  historical  materialism  in  applying  his  method  in 
this  work,  that  is  to  say,  he  did  not  explicitly  pass  from 
the  social  to  the  cosmic  interrelations.  This  is  done, 
however,  in  his  "  Excursions  "  and  in  his  "  Outcome  of 
Philosophy."  Here  he  develops  the  dialectics  of  Marx 
and  Engels,  which  is  a  theory  of  development  through 
antagonisms  to  a  higher  stage,  by  perfecting  it  and  point- 
ing out  that  the  universe  is  the  last  and  highest  organic 
unit,  which  combines  monistically  all  other  syntheses. 
By  means  of  this  understanding,  the  dialectics  became  a 
theory  of  the  cosmic  and  organic  interrelation  and  inter- 
penetration  of  all  phenomena.  While  in  "  The  Nature  of 
Human  Brain  Work  "  it  was  ascertained  that  phenomena 
exist  outside  and  independently  of  individual  man,  in  the 
"  Excursions  "  and  the  "  Outcome  of  Philosophy  "  the 
world  of  phenomena,  the  universe,  or  cosmos,  were 
shown  so  to  exist.  Dialectics  in  its  restricted  sense 
found  its  culminating  point  "in  the  cosmic  interpretation. 
Antagonisms  are  henceforth  recognized  as  merely  rel- 
ative, and  the  task  of  the  mind  is  seen  to  consist  in  analyz- 
ing this  relative  nature.  In  the  cosmic  basis,  we  find  the 


THE    PROLETARIAN    METHOD  71 

explanation  of  the  fact  that  all  antagonisms  do  not  only 
exclude  one  another,  but  are  also  conditioned  on  one 
another.  The  point  of  view  of  an  organic  cosmos  shows 
that  all  interrelations  are  parts  of  the  absolute  and  come 
into  opposition  to  each  other  as  individual  phenomena 
only  because  they  mutually  limit  one  another  in  time  and 
space,  being  either  contemporaneous  or  succeeding  one 
another,  in  ceaseless  flow.  While  Engels  in  his  "  Anti- 
Diihring  "  endeavors  to  show  by  many  illustrations  that 
the  dialectic  process  is  universal,  not  alone  in  society,  but 
also  in  nature,  Dietzgen  reveals  by  means  of  his  theory  of 
understanding,  by  one  stroke,  as  it  were,  that  the  dialectic 
movement  is  natural  to  all  phenomena,  seeing  that  they 
are  all  organic  parts  of  the  universe.  All  discoveries  of 
natural  and  social  science  furnish  daily  further  proofs 
for  the  correctness  of  this  revelation  by  Dietzgen. 

Now  let  us  supplement  Stirner's  negative  criticism  of 
religion  and  world-conception  positively  by  means  of  the 
positive  critique  of  verifiable  facts.  The  theory  of  under- 
standing elaborated  by  Dietzgen  is  our  pilot. 

Religion  arose  from  the  feeling  of  human  dependence 
on  nature.  Later  this  feeling  was  intensified  by  the 
equally  inevitable  feeling  of  infinity  and  the  need  for 
some  unifying  principle.  Driven  by  his  need  to  search 
for  a  final  explanation  of  the  world's  phenomena,  but  as 
yet  unable  to  see  through  the  interrelations  of  society  and 
nature,  man  misconstrued  the  natural  final  cause  into  a 
supernatural  one.  In  this  way,  he  created  the  metaphys- 
ical mode  of  thought,  the  absolute  distinction  between 
the  natural  and  supernatural,  which  found  its  modern 
expression  in  the  antagonism  between  physical  matter 
and  metaphysical  spirit.  This  dualism  is  to  blame  for 
the  habit  of  man  to  see  only  the  differences,  but  not  the 
interrelations  and  identities,  in  making  distinctions.  Man 


72  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

reasoned  metaphysically,  not  dialectically.  Stirner  felt 
that  the  former  method  was  wrong,  but  he  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  escaping-  from  metaphysics  into  physics.  For  we 
read  in  his  work  that  he  elevated  the  ego,  the  psycho- 
physical  individual,  to  the  position  of  the  supreme  and 
most  powerful  being.  Now,  if  we  mean  by  the  term 
supreme  being  the  most  developed  member  of  the  cosmic 
organism,  then  the  human  individual  is  doubtless  the 
highest  being  known  to  us.  But  inasmuch  as  every 
fellow-man  is  an  equally  supreme  being,  it  follows  that 
two  men  are  more  supreme  and  powerful  than  one.  This 
relation  of  power  is  the  basis  of  the  rule  of  the  majority 
among  equals.  A  society  of  equals  is  evidently  more 
powerful  than  any  individual  member,  and  the  cosmos, 
finally,  is  more  powerful  than  human  society  and  any 
other  phenomenon.  Therefore,  it  is  not  the  individual, 
who  in  the  last  analysis  determines  the  world  of  phenom- 
ena, but  it  is  the  cosmos  which  determines  the  nature  of 
body  and  soul  of  the  individual.  An  egoist,  who  ignores 
the  interrelation  and  interdependence  of  the  individual  on 
nature  and  society,  injures  himself  and  the  community, 
and  is  possessed  like  Stirner.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man 
understanding  these  relations  is  useful  to  himself  and 
society,  he  is  a  "  free  "  egoist.  Stirner  is  a  dogmatist 
of  the  priestly  order,  inasmuch  as  the  priestly  point  of 
view  is  characterized  by  the  habit  of  alleging  that  some 
concrete  phenomenon,  in  this  case  an  individual,  is  the 
phenomenon  in  general.  Thus  we  are  entangled  in  the 
meaningless  dualism  of  the  concrete  and  the  general, 
while  the  theory  of  understanding  demonstrates  beyond 
peradventure  that  the  general  arose  out  of  the  concrete, 
that  the  absolute  is  composed  of  the  relative,  the  eternal 
of  the  temporal,  the  infinite  of  finite  phenomena. 

Since  every  part  of  the  universe  partakes  of  its  infinite 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  73 

nature,  a  finite  infinity  might  appear  as  an  absurd  contra- 
diction. But  this  contradiction  is  solved  as  soon  as  we 
consider  any  concrete  phenomenon  in  relation  to  the  uni- 
verse, in  which  the  former  is  relative  as  compared  to  the 
absolute  cosmos.  We  arrive  at  the  concept  of  the  infinite 
only  by  means  of  finite  phenomena,  in  such  a  way  that  the 
force  of  thought  is  compelled  to  draw  always  certain 
lines  of  distinction,  which  on  closer  scrutiny  appear  as 
merely  formal  ones.  For  we  may  positively  range  one 
phenomenon  after  another  in  line,  either  downward  in 
the  dissection  of  the  atom,  or  upward  in  the  agglomera- 
tion of  the  universe,  without  ever  coming  to  a  beginning 
or  an  end.  In  the  same  way  we  arrive  at  the  concept  of 
eternity  by  means  of  incessant  additions  of  time.  The 
concept  of  an  organic  universe  has  at  least  the  same  im- 
portance for  a  scientific  conception  of  the  world  that  the 
changeability  of  magnitudes  to  the  infinitely  small  or  in- 
finitely great  has  for  higher  mathematics,  or  that  the 
scientific  role  of  the  atom  is  playing  in  chemistry,  or  the 
molecule  in  physics.  The  statement  of  the  fact  that  our 
mind  can  take  its  departure  only  from  objective  sense- 
perceptions  in  order  to  arrive  at  general  concepts,  the 
revelation  of  this  peculiarity  of  the  force  of  thought,  fur- 
nishes us  with  the  basic  method  for  all  scientific  work, 
namely,  the  critically  inductive  method.'  We  have  but  to 
apply  this  method  consistently  in  order  to  find  that  it 
leads  to  the  dissolution  of  religion  and  of  all  theological, 
purely  deductive  and  dualistic,  philosophies.  Religion  is 
then  replaced  by  the  organic  conception  of  the  world, 
which  satisfies  sentimental  fantasy  as  well  as  sober  rea- 
son. The  religious  feeling  of  infinity  and  need  of  a  uni- 
fying principle  are  satisfied  by  the  understanding  of  the 
organic  universe.  Speculative  philosophy  renounces  its 
seat  in  favor  of  the  science  of  understanding.  The  breast 


74  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

of  man  is  delivered  from  the  nightmare  of  all  spooks, 
because  at  last  he  may  exult  freely  and  acknowledge  with 
modest  pride  that  he  is  a  conscious  member  of  society 
and  of  the  universe.  Dietzgen's  theory  of  understanding 
completes  the  victory  of  Marxism  over  all  priests,  philos- 
ophers, anarchists  and  champions  of  the  dualistic  method 
of  thought,  by  supplementing  and  perfecting  the  unitary 
and  organic  conception  of  society  typical  of  historical 
materialism  by  the  monistic  conception  of  the  universe. 
It  proves  far  more  thoroughly  than  the  many  well- 
founded  references  to  the  results  of  natural  science,  espe- 
cially of  biology,  quoted  by  Haeckel,  that  the  social  deter- 
minism of  typical  Marxism  for  the  human  individual  is 
substantiated  by  the  determinism  of  cosmic  interrelations. 
The  monism  of  Haeckel  suffers  in  the  first  place  from 
the  fact  that  he  fancies  he  can  discover  the  peculiar  na- 
ture of  the  force  of  thought  by  biological  analyses. 
Haeckel  does  not  understand  that  his  biological  researches 
will,  indeed,  supply  us  with  proofs  of  the  interrelation  of 
mind  and  body,  but  can  give  but  scant  information  as  to 
the  peculiar  nature  of  the  force  of  thought.  He  over- 
looks the  fact  that  the  force  of  thought  as  such  can  be 
studied  only  by  an  analysis  of  its  expressions  and  func- 
tions, so  that  it  is  the  critique  of  the  faculty  in  action 
which  alone  can  give  us  any  clues.  Apart  from  the  fact 
that  Haeckel  has  taken  little  heed  of  the  study  of  social 
interrelations  and  their  laws,  so  that  he  imagines  that  he 
can  abolish  social  evils  after  the  manner  of  the  liberals  by 
first  educating  the  masses  intellectually,  instead  of  realiz- 
ing that  intellectual  training  can  produce  such  results 
only  upon  the  basis  of  definite  economic  conditions,  his 
monism  is  infected  by  dualistic  spooks  especially  for  the 
reason  that  he  has  not  settled  his  account  fully  with  the 
crowning  result  of  philosophy,  the  theory  of  understand- 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  75 

ing.  This  becomes  particularly  plain  by  his  iQth  thesis 
for  the  "  organization  of  Monism,"  Frankfort  on  Main, 
1904,  where  he  says:  "For  our  modern  science,  the 
concept  of  a  god  is  tenable  only  on  the  condition  that  we 
mean  by  '  god  '  the  last  unknowable  cause  of  all  things, 
the  inscrutable  hypothetical  '  arch-cause  of  substance.'  " 

There  we  have  once  again  that  sad  half-heartedness  of 
the  so-called  free-religious,  but  at  bottom  still  theological 
" ignorabimus"  of  Dubois-Eeymond,  after  the  tune  of: 
"  Religion,  that  is  to  say,  bondage  to  supernatural  ideas, 
must  be  preserved  for  the  people." 

The  reader  sees,  then,  that  Haeckel  belongs  to  those 
biased  thinkers,  who  have  not  become  conscious  of  the 
absolute  premise  of  thought,  the  existing  natural  and  ob- 
jective reality  of  the  universe.  We,  on  the  other  hand, 
know,  thanks  to  our  understanding  of  the  interrelations  of 
the  mind,  that  the  law  of  causality  is  necessary  to  the  hu- 
man mind  merely  as  one  of  its  forms  of  explanation,  and 
applies  indeed  to  all  concrete  phenomena  of  the  universe, 
but  not  to  the  universe  itself,  because  the  latter  is  its  own 
cause  and  effect,  without  beginning  and  end,  in  short  the 
absolute. 

We  agree  to  the  natural  unknowableness  of  the  known 
final  cause  of  all  things.  But  this  natural  miraculous- 
ness  does  not  apply  to  the  cosmic  final  cause  alone,  but 
also  to  every  one  of  its  phenomena,  which  are  likewise 
inexhaustible.  However,  it  must  be  emphasized  that  this 
is  merely  a  trivial  and  natural  miraculousness,  which  is 
founded  in  the  nature  of  our  force  of  understanding,  for 
this  phenomenon  of  the  universe  cannot  get  beyond  the 
universe,  it  cannot  exhaustively  perceive  the  nature  of 
things  either  in  general  or  in  concrete,  and  dissolve,  as  it 
were,  the  objective  reality  of  any  phenomenon  by  pure 
reason.  It  is  because  Haeckel  does  not  explain  this  point 


76  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

from  the  standpoint  of  a  consistent  theory  of  understand- 
ing, that  his  monism  retains  a  last  refuge  for  the  mystic 
faith  in  a  supernatural  force  of  understanding,  or  a  mys- 
tic final  cause.  But  Dietzgen's  critique  of  the  force  of 
understanding  demonstrates,  that  a  supernatural  force  or 
cause  is  an  absurdity,  as  every  one  may  verify  for  him- 
self. Haeckel  is  one  of  the  most  advanced  and  frank 
liberal  thinkers.  A  proletarian  conscious  of  his  position 
in  society  and  the  universe  is  grateful  to  this  prominent 
scientist  for  his  painstaking  research  on  the  field  of  bi- 
ology, which  furnishes  valuable  proofs  for  the  world-con- 
ception of  critical  communism.  But  Haeckel's  monistic 
half-heartedness  in  matters  of  the  "  final  unknowable 
cause  of  all  things  "  is  supplemented  on  the  part  of  the 
enlightened  proletariat  by  Dietzgen's  monistic  theory  of 
understanding.  This  theory,  coupled  to  historical  ma- 
terialism, offers  a  reconciliation  also  to  the  socalled  com- 
munist-anarchist, who  is  interested  in  the  freest  possible 
development  of  everybody's  personality. 

The  proletarian  conception  of  the  world  overcomes 
among  other  contradictions  also  the  antagonism  between 
egoism  and  altruism,  for  it  is  critical  communism  which 
makes  the  harmonious  development  of  all  the  indispen- 
sable condition  for  the  development  of  the  individual. 
Individual  powers  will  reach  their  highest  development 
only  when  critical  communism  will  have  triumphed. 
Then  the  individual  will  make  all  others  happy,  and  vice 
versa.  It  will  be  a  society  of  all  and  of  the  individual 
on  the  solid  basis  of  consciously  socialized  means  of  pro- 
duction, which  were  created  by  the  proletariat  and  organ- 
ized by  capitalism. 

Then  begins  the  era  of  godless  freedom,  which  pro- 
claims that  evolutionary  revolution  will  endure  for  ever. 
The  egoistic  altruists  scatter  the  clerical,  liberal,  and  so- 


THE   PROLETARIAN    METHOD  77 

cial  priesthood.  The  cosmic  dialectics  takes  root  in  the 
heart  and  brains  of  men.  Objective  reality  sits  victor- 
iously enthroned,  and  stamps  its  ruling  seal  at  last,  with 
the  conscious  knowledge  of  mankind,  upon  all  terms,  con- 
ceptions, and  actions,  which  seek  favor  in  the  eyes  of  the 
majority.  Dialectically  organized  society  secures  the 
freest  expression  to  science  and  art  by  abolishing  the 
cares  for  the  daily  bread.  The  proletariat  is  the  bearer 
of  this  greatest  of  all  social  movements  ever  recorded. 
The  individual  who  consciously  takes  part  in  it,  avows  to 
himself:  I  entrust  my  affairs  to  the  understanding  of 
the  laws  of  society  and  of  the  universe,  to  which  I  owe 
the  knowledge  that  I  must  develop  my  personality,  not  in 
a  struggle  against,  but  in  alliance  with  those  social  and 
cosmic  interrelations,  whose  proudly  modest  member  I 
am. 

(Translated  by  Ernest  (Jntermann.y 


PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

SCIENTIFIC  SOCIALISM 

(VOLKSSTAAT,    1873) 

A  considerable  number  of  readers  of  the  Volksstaat 
are  opposed  to  elaborate  and  searching  essays  in  these 
columns.  I  doubted  therefore  whether  the  following 
would  be  suitable  for  publication.  Let  the  editor  decide. 
Yet  I  beg  to  consider  whether  it  is  not  as  valuable  to 
engage  the  more  advanced  minds  and  to  gain  qualified 
thoroughgoing  comrades  as  to  strive  for  great  numbers 
by  publishing  popular  articles.  Both  these  aims,  I  think, 
should  be  kept  in  view.  If  the  party  is  really  of  opin- 
ion that  the  emancipation  from  misery  cannot  be  accom- 
plished by  mending  particular  evils  but  by  a  fundamental 
revolution  of  society,  it  necessarily  follows  that  an  agita- 
tion on  the  surface  is  inadequate  and  that  it  is  moreover 
our  duty  to  undertake  an  enquiry  into  the  very  basis  of 
social  life.  Let  us  now  proceed : 

Contemporary  socialism  is  communistic.  Socialism 
and  communism  are  now  so  near  each  other  that  there  is 
hardly  any  difference  between  them.  In  the  past  they 
differed  from  each  other  as  does  liberalism  from  de- 
mocracy, the  latter  being  in  both  cases  the  consistent  and 
radical  application  of  the  former.  From  all  other  po- 
litical theories  communistic  socialism  is  distinguished  by 
its  principle  that  the  people  can  only  be  free  when  they 
free  themselves  from  poverty,  when  their  struggle  for 

79 


8o  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

freedom  is  fought  out  on  the  social,  i.  e.,  on  the  economic, 
field.  There  is  this  difference  between  the  modern  and 
the  older  socialistic  and  communistic  theories :  in  the  past 
it  was  the  feeling,  the  unconscious  rebellion,  against  the 
unjust  distribution  of  wealth,  which  constituted  the  basis 
of  socialism;  to-day  it  is  based  on  knowledge,  on  the 
clear  recognition  of  our  historic  development.  In  the 
past  socialists  and  communists  were  able  only  to  find 
out  the  deficiencies  and  evils  of  existing  society.  Their 
schemes  for  social  reconstruction  were  phantastic. 
Their  views  were  evolved  not  from  the  world  of  realities, 
not  from  the  concrete  conditions  surrounding  them,  but 
from  their  mental  speculations,  and  were  therefore  whim- 
sical and  sentimental.  Modern  socialism,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  scientific.  Just  as  scientists  arrive  at  their  gen- 
eralizations not  by  mere  speculation,  but  by  observing  the 
phenomena  of  the  material  world,  so  are  the  socialistic 
and  communistic  theories  not  idle  schemes,  but  generali- 
zations drawn  from  economic  facts.  We  see  for  instance 
that  the  communistic  mode  of  work  is  being  more  and 
more  organized  by  the  bourgeoisie  itself.  Only  the  dis- 
tribution still  proceeds  on  the  old  lines  and  the  product 
is  withheld  from  the  people.  The  small  production  is 
disappearing  while  production  on  a  large  scale  takes  its 
place. 

Those  are  facts  resulting  from  the  economic  develop- 
ment of  history  and  not  from  any  conspiracy  of  com- 
munistic socialists.  If  we  define  work  as  an  industrial 
undertaking  whose  products  the  worker  uses  for  his  own 
consumption,  and  an  industrial  undertaking  as  the  work 
whose  products  go  to  the  market,  then  it  is  not  difficult 
to  perceive  how  the  development  of  industry  must  finally 
result  in  an  organization  of  productive  work.  On  the 


SCIENTIFIC   SOCIALISM  8l 

material   organization   of   society   scientific   socialism    is 
based. 

Scientific  socialists  apply  the  inductive  method. 
They  stick  to  facts.  They  live  in  the  real  world  and  not 
in  the  spiritualist  regions  of  scholasticism.  The  society 
we  are  striving  for  differs  from  the  present  but  by  formal 
modifications.  Indeed,  the  society  of  the  future  is  con- 
tained in  the  present  society  as  the  young  bird  is  in  the 
egg.  Modern  socialism  is  as  yet  more  of  a  scientific  doc- 
trine than  of  a  political  party  creed,  though  we  are  also 
rapidly  approaching  this  stage.  And  strange  to  say,  the 
International  is  of  purely  national  descent:  it  proceeds 
from  the  German  philosophy.  If  there  be  a  grain  of 
truth  in  the  prating  of  "  German  "  science,  then  the  scien- 
tific German  can  only  be  found  in  his  philosophic  spec- 
ulation. This  speculation  is  on  the  whole  an  adventurous 
journey,  yet  at  the  same  time  a  voyage  of  discovery.  As 
the  clumsy  musket  of  our  forefathers  represents  a  neces- 
sary stage  to  the  Prussian  needle  gun  of  the  present  time, 
so  the  metaphysical  speculations  of  a  Leibnitz,  Kant, 
Fichte,  Hegel  are  the  inevitable  paths  leading  up  to  the 
scientific  proposition,  that  the  idea,  the  conception,  the 
logic  or  the  thinking  are  not  the  premise,  but  the  result 
of  material  phenomena.  The  interminable  discussions 
between  idealism  and  materialism,  between  nominalists 
and  spiritualists  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  realists  or 
sensualists  on  the  other  hand,  as  to  whether  the  idea  was 
produced  by  the  world  or  the  world  by  the  idea,  and 
which  of  the  two  was  the  cause  or  the  effect  —  this  dis- 
cussion, I  say,  forms  the  essence  of  philosophy.  Its  mis- 
sion was  to  solve  the  antithesis  between  thought  and  be- 
ing, between  the  ideal  and  the  material.  A  proof  of  this 
view  I  find  in  the  fortnightly  review  Unsere  Zeit  for  the 
second  half  of  January,  1873,  in  an  essay  on  intoxicating 


82  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

articles  of  consumption,  as  wine,  tobacco,  coffee,  brandy, 
opium,  etc.  The  author,  after  having  stated  that  the  use 
of  intoxicants  was  to  be  found  among  all  nations,  at  all 
times  and  under  all  conditions  of  human  society,  proceeds 
to  declare  that  the  cause  of  that  fact  must  be  looked  for 
there,  "  where  the  cause  of  all  religion  and  philosophy 
lies,  in  the  antithesis  of  our  being,  in  the  partly  divine, 
partly  animal  nature  of  man."  This  antagonism  between 
divinity  and  animality  in  human  nature  is  in  other  words 
the  antithesis  between  the  ideal  and  the  material.  Re- 
ligion and  philosophy  work  towards  a  reconciliation  of 
those  conflicting  principles.  Philosophy  proceeded  from 
religion  and  began  to  rebel  against  its  conception  of  life. 
In  religion  the  idea  is  the  primary  element  which  creates 
and  regulates  matter.  Philosophy,  the  daughter  of  re- 
ligion, naturally  inherited  a  good  deal  of  her  mother's 
blood.  She  needed  ages  of  growth  to  generate  the  anti- 
religious,  scientific  result,  the  apodictically  safe  proposi- 
tion, that  the  world  is  not  the  attribute  of  spirit,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  that  spirit,  thought,  idea  is  only  one  of  the 
attributes  of  matter.  Hegel,  it  is  true,  did  not  carry 
science  to  that  height,  yet  so  near  was  he  to  it  that  two 
of  his  followers,  Feuerbach  and  Marx,  scaled  the  sum- 
mit. The  clearing  up  of  speculation  helped  Feuerbach 
to  give  us  his  wonderful  analysis  of  religion,  and  en- 
abled Marx  to  penetrate  the  deepest  recesses  of  law,  pol- 
itics and  history.  When  we  see,  however,  Herbart, 
Schopenhauer,  Hartman,  etc.,  still  going  on  speculating 
and  philosophizing,  we  cannot  regard  them  as  more  than 
stragglers,  lost  in  the  phantastic  depth  of  their  own 
thoughts,  lagging  behind  in  the  back-woods  and  not 
knowing  that  the  speculative  fire  has  been  overcome  in 
the  front.  On  the  other  hand,  Marx,  the  leader  of  scien- 
tific socialism,  is  achieving  splendid  success  by  apply- 


SCIENTIFIC    SOCIALISM  83 

ing  inductive  logic  to  branches  of  knowledge  which  have 
hitherto  been  maltreated  by  speculation.  As  far  back  as 
the  year  1620  Francis  Bacon  declared  in  his  "  Novum 
Organon  "  the  inductive  method  as  the  savior  from  un- 
fruitful scholasticism  and  as  the  rock  on  which  modern 
science  was  to  be  built. 

Indeed,  where  we  have  to  deal  with  concrete  phenom- 
ena, or,  as  it  were,  with  palpable  things,  the  method  of 
materialism  has  long  since  reigned  supremely.  Yet,  it 
needed  more  than  practical  success :  it  needed  the  the- 
oretical working-out  in  all  its  details  in  order  to  com- 
pletely rout  its  enemy,  the  scholastic  speculation  or 
deduction.  In  his  famous  "  History  of  Civilization  in 
England  "  Thomas  Buckle  speaks  at  great  length  of  the 
difference  between  the  deductive  and  inductive  mind, 
without,  as  it  seems,  having  grasped  the  essence  of  the 
matter ;  he  but  proves  what  he  admits  himself  in  the  intro- 
duction to  his  work  that,  though  having  made  German 
philosophy  a  serious  study,  he  did  not  fully  penetrate  it. 
If  this  happens  to  ripe  and  ingenious  scholarship,  what 
shall  become  of  immature  and  superficial  general  knowl- 
edge which  deals  not  with  specialties  but  with  the  general 
results  of  science  ?  In  order  to  indicate  clearly  the  scien- 
tific basis  of  socialism,  I  venture  to  enter  more  fully  into 
the  general  result  of  philosophy,  into  the  solution  of  the 
antithesis  between  the  deductive  and  inductive  method. 
But  I  fear  lest  the  result  of  metaphysics,  so  ostenta- 
tiously announced,  may  appear  to  the  reader  as  some- 
what insignificant  and  commonplace.  I  beg,  there- 
fore, to  remind  you  of  Columbus  who  by  means  of  an  egg 
once  for  all  furnished  the  proof  that  great  discoveries 
resolve  themselves  into  an  ingenious,  yet  simple,  idea. 

When  we  retire  to  the  solitude  of  our  cell  to  search 
there  in  deep  contemplation,  or,  as  it  were,  in  the  inner- 


84  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

most  of  our  brains,  for  the  right  way  we  want  to  follow 
the  next  morning,  we  must  remember  that  our  mental 
effort  can  be  successful  only  because  of  our  previous,  if 
involuntary,  experiences  and  adventures  which  we,  by 
help  of  our  memory,  have  taken  along  into  our  cell. 

That  tells  the  whole  story  of  philosophic  speculation  or 
deduction.  These  philosophers  imagine  they  have  drawn 
their  theories,  not  from  concrete  material,  but  from  the 
innermost  of  their  brains,  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
have  but  performed  an  unconscious  induction,  a  process 
of  thought,  of  argument  not  without  material,  but  with 
indefinite  and  therefore,  confused  material.  Con- 
versely, the  inductive  method  is  distinguished  only  by 
this  that  its  deduction  is  done  consciously.  Scientific 
"  laws  "  are  deductions  drawn  by  human  thinking  from 
empiric  material.  The  spiritist  needs  material  just  as  the 
materialist  needs  spirit.  This  thesis,  when  brought  out 
with  mathematical  precision,  is  the  result  of  philosophic 
speculation. 

That  may  appear  simple  enough,  yet  even  a  cursory  ex- 
amination of  any  of  our  reviews  will  teach  us  how  little 
familiar  that  truth  is  not  only  to  our  journalists  and 
writers  but  also  to  our  historians  and  statesmen  who 
are  untiring  in  their  attempts  to  evolve  views  and  theses 
not  from  the  existing  conditions  but  from  their  heads, 
hearts,  consciences,  categorical  imperatives  or  from  some 
other  unreal,  mystical  and  spiritual  corner.  The  con- 
crete questions  of  the  day  are,  as  a  rule,  solved  by,  or 
with  the  help  of,  given  material.  But  in  the  discussion 
with  Bismarck  whether  might  goes  before  right  or  con- 
versely ;  in  the  squabbles  of  theology  whether  the  gods 
are  made  by  the  world  or  the  world  by  the  gods ;  whether 
catechisms  or  natural  sciences  enlighten  the  mind ; 
whether  history  moves  upward  to  a  higher  stage  or  goes 


SCIENTIFIC   SOCIALISM  8$ 

down  to  its  Day  of  Judgment ;  in  political  and  economic 
questions :  whether  capital  or  labor  creates  value,  whether 
aristocracy  or  democracy  is  the  right  form  of  government, 
whether  we  have  to  work  on  conservative,  liberal  or  rev- 
olutionary lines ;  in  short,  in  abstract  categories,  in  mat- 
ters of  philosophy,  religion,  politics  and  social  life,  our 
leaders  of  science  find  themselves  in  the  most  unscientific 
confusion.  They  test  human  institutions  by  such  prin- 
ciples or  ideas  as  the  idea  of  justice,  of  liberty,  of  truth, 
etc.  "  We,"  says  Frederick  Engels,  "  describe  things  as 
they  are.  Proudhon,  on  the  other  hand,  wants  our  pres- 
ent society  to  arrange  itself,  not  according  to  the  laws  of 
its  economic  development,  but  in  conformity  with  the 
precepts  of  justice."  Proudhon  is  in  this  respect  the 
prototype  of  all  unscientific  doctrinairism. 

A  far  superior  guide  in  all  such  questions  is  modern 
socialism.  Owing  to  its  philosophical  foundation  it 
stands  out  prominently  as  a  unanimous,  firm  and  compact, 
method  amidst  the  endless  and  shifting  dissensions  of  its 
political  opponents  of  every  shade  and  opinion.  What  the 
dogma  is  to  the  religious  belief,  material  facts  are  to  the 
science  of  inductive  socialism,  while  the  views  of  liber- 
alism are  as  whimsical  and  elusive  as  the  ideal  concep- 
tions, as  the  ideas  of  eternal  justice  or  liberty  on  which 
the  liberals  believe  to  be  safely  based. 

The  fundamental  proposition  of  inductive  socialism 
may  be  thus  formulated:  there  is  no  eternal  principle  or 
an  a  priori  idea  of  the  divine,  just  and  free ;  there  is  no 
revelation  or  a  chosen  people,  but  there  are  material  fac- 
tors which  govern  human  society. 

Far  from  bewailing  that  fact,  we  acknowledge  it  as  ab- 
solutely necessary  and  reasonable,  as  something  which 
may  be  denied  by  power  of  imagination,  but  which  can- 
not be  altered,  nor,  indeed,  ought  it  to  be  altered.  By 


86  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

granting  that  society  is  dominated  by  material  interests 
we  do  not  deny  the  power  of  the  ideals  of  the  heart, 
mind,  science  and  art.  For  we  have  no  more  to  deal 
with  the  absolute  antithesis  between  idealism  and  ma- 
terialism, but  with  their  higher  synthesis  which  has  been 
found  in  the  knowledge  that  the  ideal  depends  on  the  ma- 
terial, that  divine  justice  and  liberty  depend  on  the 
production  and  distribution  of  earthly  goods.  In  the 
wide  range  of  human  needs  the  bodily  ones  are  the  most 
indispensable;  our  physical  needs  must  first  be  sat- 
isfied before  we  are  able  even  to  think  of  our  mental 
ones  and  those  of  our  heart,  eye  and  ear.  The 
same  holds  good  in  the  life  of  nations  and  parties. 
Their  abstract  conceptions  depend  on  the  way  they  make 
their  living.  Tribes  living  by  warfare  and  booty  have 
not  the  same  heaven,  the  same  sense  of  justice  or  of 
liberty  as  our  patriarchs  are  supposed  to  have  had  who, 
as  is  well  known,  were  living  on  cattle-breeding.  Knights 
and  monks  had  notions  of  righteousness,  of  virtue  and 
honour  which  were  decidedly  illiberal  and  anti-bourgeois, 
because  their  means  of  life  were  not  supplied  by  factory 
labor  and  financial  transactions. 

Of  course,  the  defenders  of  Christianity  strongly  ob- 
ject to  those  views.  In  order  to  prove  the  independence 
of  spirit  from  matter  and  of  philosophy  from  economics 
they  make  the  assertion  that  the  same  Christian  truth  is 
invariably  taught  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and 
under  all  climes.  They  forget,  however,  how  they 
trimmed  the  sails  to  the  wind.  They  forget  likewise 
that  the  love  preached  by  the  apostles  and  churchfathers 
—  the  love  which  gave  away  the  second  coat  is  no  more 
the  many-coated  love  under  the  overcoat  which  strips  the 
poor  to  the  skin  —  of  course,  rightfully.  To  the  diverse 
modes  of  property  and  trade  correspond  diverse  Chris- 


SCIENTIFIC    SOCIALISM  87 

tianities.  The  institution  of  slavery  in  U.  S.  A.  was 
Christian,  and  Christianity  was  slave-holding  there.  The 
religious  reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  not 
the  cause,  but  the  effect,  of  the  social  reformation  that 
followed  upon  the  shifting  of  the  economic  center  from 
the  manor  to  the  city.  And  that  was  preceded  by  the  rise 
of  navigation  and  the  discovery  of  the  New  World  and 
new  trade-routes,  which  indicate  the  rise  of  manufacture. 
Industrial  life  having  no  use  for  ascetic  bodies  introduced 
the  protestant  doctrine  of  grace  that  abolished  religious 
exercises  in  favor  of  stern  industrial  work. 

That  the  materialist  conception  of  history  is  scientific 
induction  and  not  idle  speculation  manifests  itself  even 
more  clearly  when  we  apply  it  to  political  party  prob- 
lems. With  its  help  the  tangled  mass  of  party  strug- 
gles can  be  easily  unravelled  into  a  clear,  running  thread. 
The  squire  is  enthusiastic  over  the  absolute  monarchy 
because  the  absolute  monarchy  cared  for  the  squirearchy. 
Manufacturers,  merchants,  bankers,  in  short,  capitalists 
are  liberal  or  constitutional,  for  constitutionalism  is  the 
political  expression  of  capitalism,  which  liberalizes  trade 
and  commerce,  supplies  the  factories  with  free  labor, 
promotes  banking  and  financial  transactions,  and,  in  gen- 
eral, takes  care  of  the  interests  of  industrial  life.  Phil- 
istines, shopkeepers,  small  tradesmen  and  peasants  join 
alternately  one  party  or  the  other  according  to  the  prom- 
ises made  with  regard  to  the  promotion  of  their  well- 
being  and  to  the  relief  from  the  effects  of  competition 
with  big  capital. 

The  familiar  accusation  of  political  hypocrisy  which 
the  Parliamentary  parties  throw  at  each  other  was  sug- 
gested to  Bismarck  by  one  of  the  renegades  of  our  camp 
whom  he  likes  to  employ.  That  accusation  is  based  on 
the  recognition  that  the  aristocratic  and  middle  class  con- 


88  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

sciousness  was  formed  by  the  material  requirements  of 
the  landed  and  manufacturing  and  trading  classes,  and 
that  behind  their  idealistic  watchwords  of  religion,  pa- 
triotism, freedom  and  progress  lurks  the  concrete  in- 
terest as  the  motor  power.  I  cannot  deny  that  many 
of  their  followers  are  not  conscious  of  their  real  motives, 
and  that  they  sincerely  believe  their  political  work  to  be 
purely  idealistic.  But  I  should  like  to  remark  that  it  is 
with  recognitions  as  with  epidemics,  they  are  in  the  air 
and  people  feel  them  somehow.  Indeed,  the  political  hy- 
pocrisy of  our  time  is  half  conscious,  half  unconscious. 
There  are  many  people  who  take  the  ideological  phrases 
as  gospel  truth,  but  also  the  artful  are  by  no  means  rare 
who  want  them  to  be  taken  as  such.  The  matter  can  be 
easily  explained.  Different  classes,  distinguished  by 
their  different  material  conditions,  succeed  each  other  to 
political  power.  The  interests  of  the  ruling  class  are 
always  for  a  certain  time  in  harmony  with  the  interests 
of  the  community,  that  is  with  the  progressive  forces  of 
civilization.  And  it  is  that  harmony  which  justifies  the 
ruling  class  in  regarding  itself  as  the  spring  of  social 
welfare.  However,  the  onward  march  of  history 
changes  everything,  also  the  justification  for  ruling 
power.  When  the  economic  interests  of  the  ruling  class 
cease  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  general  welfare,  when 
the  ruling  class  loses  its  functions  and  falls  into  decay, 
then  its  leaders  can  only  save  their  predominant  posi- 
tion by  hypocrisy ;  their  phraseology  has  been  emptied  of 
all  reality.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  some  individuals  rise 
above  class  interests  and  join  the  new  social  power  which 
represents  the  interest  of  the  community.  So  did  Abbe 
Sieye  and  Count  de  Mirabeau  in  the  French  Revolution, 
who,  though  belonging  to  the  ruling  classes,  became  the 
advocates  of  the  third  Estate.  Still,  these  are  excep- 


SCIENTIFIC    SOCIALISM  89 

tions  proving  only  the  inductive  rule  that,  in  social  as  in 
natural  science,  the  material  precedes  the  ideal. 

It  may  appear  rather  contradictory  to  make  the  Heg- 
elian system  of  philosophy  with  its  pronounced  idealism 
the  starting  point  of  the  materialist  conception  of  his- 
tory. Yet,  the  Hegelian  "  Idea "  is  striving  for  real- 
ization ;  it  is  indeed  a  materialism  in  disguise.  Con- 
versely, the  Hegelian  reality  appears  in  the  mask  of  the 
"  Idea,"  or  of  the  logical  conception.  In  one  of  the  latest 
issues  of  Blatter  fur  Unterhaltung  Herr  J.  Volkelt 
makes  the  following  remark :  "  Our  modern  thinkers 
have  to  submit  to  the  crucial  test  of  empiricism.  The 
Hegelian  principle  has  no  reason  to  be  afraid  of  such  a 
test.  Consistently  followed  up  it  means  that  the  spirit  of 
history  can  only  be  conceived  through  the  existing  ma- 
terial." Gleams  of  truth  like  these  we  can  find  now 
here  and  there  in  the  periodical  literature,  but  for  a  con- 
sistent and  systematic  application  of  the  theory  'we  must 
go  to  scientific  socialism.  The  inductive  method  draws 
its  mental  conclusion  from  concrete  facts.  Scientific 
socialism  considers  our  views  dependent  upon  our  ma- 
terial needs,  and  our  political  standpoint  dependent  upon 
the  economic  position  of  the  class  we  belong  to.  More- 
over, this  conception  corresponds  with  the  aspirations  of 
the  masses  whose  needs  are  in  the  first  place  material, 
while  the  ruling  class  must  necessarily  base  itself  on  the 
deductive  principle,  on  the  preconceived  unscientific  no- 
tion that  the  spiritual  salvation  and  the  mental  training 
of  the  masses  are  to  precede  the  solution  of  the  social 
question. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY* 

SIX    SERMONS 

(VOLKSSTAAT,    1870   to    1875) 
I. 

Friends  and  Fellow-Citizens:  The  teachings  of  Social- 
ism contain  the  material  for  a  new  religion  which,  un- 
like any  other  religion,  appeals  not  merely  to  the  heart 
and  emotions,  but  at  the  same  time  to  the  brain,  the 
organ  of  knowledge.  From  all  other  earthly  knowledge 
socialism  is  distinguished  by  its  religious  form,  by  its 
fervid  appeal  to  the  heart  and  soul  of  man.  Generally 
speaking  the  object  of  religion  is  to  save  the  suffering 
soul  from  the  gloom  and  misery  of  earthly  life.  This 
object  it  has  thus  far  realized  only  in  an  unreal  and  phan- 
tastic  manner,  by  referring  us  to  an  invisible  God  and  to 
a  Kingdom  inhabited  by  ghosts.  The  gospel  of  to-day 
promises  to  save  us  from  misery  in  a  real  and  palpable 
way.  God,  that  is  the  Good,  the  Beautiful  and  the  Holy, 
is  to  be  made  man,  and  is  to  descend  from  heaven  unto 
the  earth,  not  as  in  the  days  of  old  in  the  flame  of  religion 
and  in  the  spell  of  wonder,  but  in  reason  and  reality.  We 
want  our  saviour,  our  Word,  to  become  flesh,  and  to  be 
materialized  not  in  one  individual  only.  All  of  us  de- 
sire, the  people  want  to  become  sons  of  God. 

*  Used  here  and  later  on  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  word  as  the  most 
prominent  representation  of  militant  Socialism.  The  reader  may,  therefore, 
safely  change  "  The  Religion,  Ethics  and  Philosophy  of  Social  Democracy  " 
into:  Socialism  and  Religion,  Ethics,  Philosophy. —  EDITOR. 

90 


THE  RELIGION  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  QI 

Religion  was  until  now  a  matter  for  the  dispossessed. 
Now,  however,  the  matter  of  the  dispossessed  is  becom- 
ing religion,  that  is  something  which  takes  hold  of  the 
whole  heart  and  soul  of  those  who  believe.  The  new 
faith,  the  faith  of  the  proletariat,  revolutionizes  every 
thing,  and  transforms  after  the  manner  of  science,  the  old 
faiths.  In  opposition  to  the  olden  times  we  say,  Sun, 
stand  thou  still,  and  Earth,  move  and  transform!  In 
the  old  religion  man  served  the  gospel,  in  the  new  relig- 
ion the  gospel  is  to  serve  man.  In  order  to  emancipate 
humanity  from  religion  not  only  vaguely  but  distinctly 
and  really,  it  is  necessary  to  overcome  religion  by  analyz- 
ing and  fully  comprehending  it.  The  new  gospel  asks 
for  a  thorough  revision  of  the  whole  system  of  our 
thought.  According  to  the  old  revelation  the  law  was 
the  primary,  the  supreme  and  the  eternal,  and  man  the 
secondary  element. 

According  to  the  new  revelation- man  is  the  primary, 
the  supreme  and  the  eternal,  and  the  law  the  secondary, 
temporary  and  transitory  element. 

We  do  not  live  for  the  sake  of  the  law,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  the  law  exists  for  our  sake,  to  serve  us,  and 
to  be  modified  according  to  our  needs.  The  old  gospel 
required  of  us  patience  and  submissiveness ;  the  new  gos- 
pel requires  of  us  energy  and  activity.  In  the  place  of 
grace  it  puts  conscious  work.  The  old  bible  was  named 
authority  and  faith;  the  new  has  for  its  title  revolution- 
ary science. 

Faith  and  science,  my  dear  friends,  form  the  contradic- 
tion which  separates  the  old  from  the  new  gospel.  Those 
who  have  clearly  grasped  this  distinction  are  incipient 
socialists,  even  if  they  have  not  penetrated  to  the  political 
or  social  consequences  springing  from  it.  This  distinction 
between  faith  and  science  contains  the  germ  of  revolu- 


92  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

tionary  development.  Both  pursue  the  same  end,  the 
salvation  of  mankind,  yet  their  ways  are  as  poles  as- 
sunder.  Faith  refers  us  to  fancy  and  imagination, 
science  to  reason  and  reality. 

Our  opponents,  the  scribes  and  pharisees  of  the  old 
gospel,  stand  and  fall  with  the  dogmas  of  their  faith; 
they  are  past  redemption.  Those,  however,  who  stand 
on  the  ground  of  science,  submit  their  judgment  to  the 
crucible  of  facts ;  they  are  the  followers  of  the  new  gos- 
pel. The  struggle  between  faith  and  science,  the  antag- 
onism between  the  old  and  the  new  gospel,  dates  by  no 
means  from  the  days  of  socialism.  It  goes  back  to  the 
ancient  world,  to  the  beginnings  of  scientific  research, 
then  it  revives  with  the  renaissance  and  grows  more  and 
more  with  the  approach  of  the  present  era  where  it  finds 
its  embodiment  in  our  leaders  of  scientific  thought, 
though  it  reaches  its  full  development  only  in  the  modern 
labor  movement. 

All  great  movements  of  the  past  were  but  the  fore- 
runners, the  preliminaries  of  the  general  movement,  of 
the  coming  great  revolution  whose  birth  we  are  wit- 
nessing. Greek  civilization  and  Christianity,  the  Ref- 
ormation, the  French  revolution  of  1789,  philosophy  and 
modern  science  are  mere  instruments,  but  industry  is  the 
great  architect,  and  socialism  the  lofty  structure  which 
the  nations  of  our  time  are  rearing.  The  history  of  the 
past  has  diligently  collected  the  necessary  materials,  and 
now,  friends,  the  time  has  come  to  dig  up  the  soil  and 
to  lay  the  foundations. 

Valuable  as  the  labors  of  the  past  may  be,  they  are 
but  fanciful  ornaments  in  comparison  with  the  funda- 
mental work  the  future  has  to  carry  out. 

"  Man  is  free,  even  were  he  born  in  chains."  This  say- 
ing of  Schiller  needs  correction.  For  man  is  born  in 


THE  RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  93 

chains  and  must  struggle  for  freedom.  The  heaviest 
chains,  the  strongest  fetters  were  put  on  him  by  Nature. 
Against  her  tyranny  he  struggles  from  the  beginning  of 
his  days.  Sustenance  and  apparel  he  must  wrest  from 
her.  The  whip  of  dire  necessity  in  her  hand  she  stands 
over  him,  and  on  her  whims  and  frowns  his  existence 
depends.  It  was  the  tyranny  of  Nature  which  gave  re- 
ligion that  predominant  influence  over  the  soul  of  man. 
Religion  promised  him  relief  from  the  heavy  hand  of 
Nature.  How  long  and  anxiously  did  Judaism  wait  for 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Messiah !  "  Consider  the  ravens : 
for  they  neither  sow  nor  reap ;  which  neither  have  store- 
house nor  barn ;  and  God  feedeth  them ;  how  much  are 
ye  better  than  the  fowls  ?  "  Praying  and  fasting  are  the 
means  recommended  by  Christianity  against  the  inborn 
helplessness  of  man.  Through  the  whole  of  the  mid- 
dle ages  that  advice  was  faithfully  acted  upon,  until  its 
futility  became  manifest.  With  the  appearance  of  Lu- 
ther religious  thought  changes.  He  proclaimed  that 
Christ  had  performed  for  us  in  heavenly  grace  our  re- 
ligious salvation,  thus  relegating  sacred  exercises  to 
Sundays  chiefly  and  giving  free  the  week-days  for  sober 
work.  His  challenge  to  the  medieval  Church  heralds  the 
era  of  industrial  activity.  Even  though  his  followers 
afterwards  misrepresented  his  teachings  and  though  Lu- 
ther himself  left  his  work  but  half  finished,  it  is  neverthe- 
less true  that  with  the  Eeformation  man  starts  out  on 
a  new  earthly  practice,  the  salvation  through  Labor 
without  exactly  giving  up  his  theories  about  heaven.  He 
works,  accumulates  wealth,  and  with  the  accumulated 
wealth  he  rises  to  the  height  of  a  new  conception,  to  the 
gospel  of  social  salvation. 

Religion   has    since   time   immemorial  been   so  much 
cared  for  and  hallowed,  that  even  those  minds  who  have 


94  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

given  up  the  belief  in  a  personal  God,  in  a  supreme  pro- 
tector of  mankind,  still  adhere  to  some  sort  of  religion. 
Let  us  for  the  sake  of  those  conservatives  use  the  old 
word  for  the  new  thing.  This  is  not  only  a  concession 
made  to  prejudice  in  order  the  more  easily  to  overcome 
it,  but  is  also  justified  by  the  thing  itself.  Indeed,  re- 
ligions differ  not  more  nor  less  from  each  other  than 
all  of  them  from  the  anti-religious  social-democracy.  All 
religions  have  this  in  common,  that  they  strive  for  the 
salvation  of  suffering  humanity,  and  to  lead  it  up  to  the 
good,  the  beautiful,  the  righteous  and  the  divine.  Well, 
social-democracy  is  all  the  more  the  true  religion  as  it 
strives  for  the  very  same  end,  not  in  a  fantastic  way, 
not  by  praying  and  fasting,  wishing  and  sighing,  but  in 
a  manner  positive  and  active,  real  and  true,  by  the  social 
organization  of  manual  and  mental  work. 

Work  is  the  name  of  the  new  Redeemer. 

Christ  made  a  great  number  of  proselytes  long  be- 
fore the  church  was  established,  so  did  in  many  cen- 
turies the  new  redeemer,  Work,  before  he  could  in  our 
present  age  think  to  ascend  the  throne  and  to  take  the 
sceptre  into  his  hand.  Now  he  is  endowed  with  the  at- 
tributes of  the  Godhead,  with  power  and  knowledge. 
He  did  not  come  to  his  glory  in  an  immaculate  and 
miraculous  way.  He  is  born  in  pains,  and  grown  up  in 
struggle  and  affliction  and  sorrow.  Although  it  is  he 
who  civilizes  man  and  cares  for  him,  and  comes  with 
the  promise  to  fully  release  him  from  the  bonds  of  slav- 
ery, and  actually  shows  him  the  longed-for  new  land  from 
afar,  yet  the  crown  of  thorns  is  on  his  brow  and  the 
cross  of  contempt  on  his  shoulders. 

However,  let  us  drop  parables  and  allegories,  and  do 
away  with  metaphorical  language.  The  thing  is  much 
too  great  and  too  prominent  to  need  mystical  drapery. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  95 

We  deal  here  with  the  salvation  of  mankind  in  the  truest 
sense  of  the  word.  If  there  be  anything  holy,  here  we 
stand  before  the  holy  of  holiest.  It  is  neither  a  fetish 
nor  an  ark  of  the  covenant,  neither  a  tabernacle  nor  a 
monstrance.  It  is  the  real,  positive  salvation  of  the 
whole  civilized  humanity.  This  salvation  was  neither 
invented  nor  revealed,  it  has  grown  out  of  the  accumu- 
lated labor  of  history.  It  consists  in  the  wealth  of  to- 
day which  arose  glorious  and  dazzling  in  the  light  of 
science,  out  of  the  darkness  of  barbarism,  out  of  the  op- 
pression, superstition  and  misery  of  the  people,  out  of 
human  flesh  and  blood,  to  save  humanity.  This  wealth, 
in  all  its  palpable  reality,  is  the  solid  foundation  of  the 
hope  of  social-democracy. 

The  wealth  of  to-day  does  not  consist  in  the  superb 
mansions,  inhabited  by  the  privileged  of  society,  nor 
does  it  consist  in  their  costly  apparel,  or  in  the  gold  and 
the  precious  stones  of  their  jewelry,  or  in  the  heaps  of 
goods  peeping  through  the  show  windows  of  our  great 
cities.  All  that  as  well  as  the  coin  and  bullion  in  the 
trunks  and  safes  form  but  an  appendix  or,  so  to  speak, 
the  tassels  and  tufts,  behind  which  the  wealth  is  con- 
cealed —  the  rock  on  which  our  hope  is  built. 

What  authorizes  the  people  to  believe  in  the  salvation 
from  the  long  ages  of  torture  —  nay,  not  only  to  believe 
in,  but  to  see  it,  and  actively  to  strive  for,  is  the  fairy- 
like  productive  power,  the  prodigious  fertility  of  human 
labor.  In  the  secrets  which  we  have  wrung  from  Na- 
ture; in  the  magic  formulas  by  which  we  force  her  to  do 
our  wishes  and  to  yield  her  bounties  almost  without  any 
painful  work  on  our  part;  in  the  constantly  increasing 
improvement  of  the  methods  of  production  —  in  this  I 
say,  consists  the  wealth  which  can  accomplish  what  no 
redeemer  ever  could. 


96  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

All  exertion  and  struggle  in  human  history,  all  aspira-* 
tions  and  researches  of  science  find  their  common  aim  in 
freedom  of  man,  in  the  subjection  of  Nature  under  the 
sway  of  his  mind. 

What  is  freedom?  Is  it  a  phantom  of  which  the 
German  poet  Schenkendorf  sings,  "  Freedom  as  I  un- 
derstand it,"  and  of  which,  strictly  speaking,  only  the 
name  is  known;  after  which  the  revolutionists  of  1848 
were  hankering,  like  a  boarding-school  miss  after  some 
chivalrous  knight?  And  verily,  also  those  have  but  a 
philistine  conception  of  its  sublime  character,  who  but 
see  in  it  freedom  from  police  interference  or  freedom  of 
competition,  of  conscience,  of  speech,  of  organization  and 
of  public  meetings.  All  that  is  but  the  fringe  of  free- 
dom. Our  Liberals  and  Progressives,  who  only  fight  for 
that  tinsel,  have  long  ago  deprived  the  people  of  all  real- 
ity of  freedom  which  they  consider  as  their  exclusive 
privilege.  What  we  want  and  what  the  Liberals  largely 
possess  in  superabundance  is  freedom  from  the  bonds  of 
slave-labor,  freedom  from  poverty,  misery  and  sorrow, 
freedom  from  starvation  and  ignorance,  freedom  from 
the  curse  of  being  the  beast  of  burden  to  the 
"  higher  classes  "  —  this  freedom  for  the  masses  of  toil- 
ing humanity  is  the  sacred  aim  which  modern  society 
could  attain  to  by  the  infinite  productivity  of  human 
labor. 

Man,  to  be  sure,  is  still  dependent  on  Nature.  Her 
tribulations  are  not  as  yet  all  overcome.  Culture  has  yet 
a  good  deal  to  do;  aye,  its  work  is  endless.  But  we 
have  so  far  mastered  the  dragon,  that  we  finally  suc- 
ceeded in  forging  the  weapon  with  which  it  can  be  sub- 
dued ;  we  know  now  the  way  to  tame  the  beast  into  a  use- 
ful domestic  animal.  From  praying  and  fasting  we  have 
turned  to  thinking  and  working.  The  result  of  the 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  97 

change  of  method  is  plainly  visible  in  the  conquests  of 
modern  industry,  whose  soul  is  the  productivity  of  our 
labor. 

The  hardships  of  mankind  were  perhaps  until  now 
inevitable,  considering  that  there  was  no  power  to  mitigate 
them.  It  certainly  required  thousands  of  years  of  de- 
velopment to  bring  forth  that  power.  As  long  as  the 
labor  of  the  people  was  not  fruitful  enough  to  satisfy 
the  needs  of  the  masses,  certain  classes  could  usurp  the 
privilege  of  governing  the  land.  I  am  even  inclined  to 
go  further  and  to  admit  that  the  task  of  developing  our 
labor  power  to  that  degree  of  prodigious  fertility  which 
we  see  to-day,  has  necessitated  a  privileged  governing 
class  as  well  as  the  exploitation  of  the  masses.  I  am  thus 
ready  to  acquiesce  patiently  in  the  misery  of  the  past,  and 
bear  it  no  grudge  or  malice.  But  all  the  more  I  am  now 
justified  in  pressing  forward  the  claims  of  social-de- 
mocracy. The  people  are  striving  for  real  salvation,  be- 
cause the  conditions  are  ready  for  it.  Poverty,  starva- 
tion and  misery  in  the  past  were  quite  often  the  inevitable 
results  of  the  deficiency  of  production.  Now,  or  to  be 
more  accurate,  since  the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  case  is  quite  the  reverse:  it  is  the  superfluity 
of  wealth,  as  manifested  in  the  recurring  periods  of  com- 
mercial and  industrial  depression,  which  interferes  with 
production.  However  full  the  granaries  and  ware- 
houses may  be  with  goods  of  all  kind,  the  people  starve 
and  freeze,  because  the  possessing  classes,  satiated  with 
wealth,  do  not  require  their  labor  power.  The  world  is 
over-populated  (hear!  hear!),  say  our  professors  and  pol- 
iticians. Yes,  the  world  is  over-populated,  because  the 
means  of  sustenance  can  be  so  easily  gotten.  Human 
history  had  until  now  the  task  to  organize  production,  to 
unfold  labor  power,  to  economize,  and  to  produce  wealth. 


98  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

To  achieve  that  purpose,  civilization  used  man  ruth- 
lessly as  a  tool.  As  far  as  that  task  can  be  fulfilled  by 
means  of  oppression,  it  has  been  fulfilled.  Civilization 
was  until  now  the  aim,  and  man  the  means  of  history. 
The  time  has  now  come  to  revert  the  case  and  to  make 
man  the  end,  and  civilization  the  means.  The  prime  ne- 
cessity to  an  advance  in  civilization  is  freedom  of  the 
people  to  participate  in  consumption.  Only  occasionally 
and  exceptionally  there  is  suffering  from  a  lack  of  sup- 
ply, but  generally  and  as  a  rule  we  witness  misery 
caused  by  an  abundance  of  goods  in  quest  of  consumers. 
Owing  to  free  competition  this  abundance,  called  na- 
tional wealth,  has  been  the  means  to  reduce  prices  and 
thus  to  stimulate  advanced  methods  of  production  by  the 
introduction  of  labor  and  cost-saving  machinery.  How- 
ever, in  consequnce  thereof  those  who  were  unable  to 
compete  went  to  the  wall  and  the  purchasing  power  of 
society  decreased.  So  it  came  about  that  wealth,  once 
the  stimulator  of  progress,  is  now  turning  into  a  factor 
of  historical  stagnation. 

Some  of  you,  dear  friends,  may  think  that  I  see  some- 
thing which  is  not  warranted  by  fact.  However  great 
wealth  might  be,  it  was  by  no  means  so  abundant  as  to 
stifle  production  and  to  deprive  the  laborer  of  his  em- 
ployment. 

To  be  sure,  new  factories  are  being  built  and  the  old 
ones  prosper ;  new  railways,  shipping  lines  and  canals  are 
being  opened,  and  the  land  does  not  go  out  of  cultiva- 
tion. Yet  all  this  is  but  the  appearance,  and  not  the 
reality  of  things,  because  truth  is  veiled  by  seeming  con- 
tradictions. He  who  has  eyes  to  see,  sees  the  general 
tendency,  despite  the  particular  contradiction  he  sees  the 
superfluity  and  the  retrenchment  of  industry,  despite  the 
fact  that  the  chimneys  continue  to  pour  forth  smoke. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  99 

What  does  not  move  as  rhythmically  as  its  nature  re- 
quires, is  lame.  And  who  could  deny  that  there  is  both 
the  need  and  the  power  to  expand  production  to  many 
times  its  present  dimensions?  No  matter  how  great  or 
small  the  present  improvements  of  agriculture  or  of  ma- 
chinery may  be,  on  the  whole  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
growth  of  production  is  kept  in  check  by  the  question  of 
consumption.  The  salvation  of  humanity  is  involved  in 
this  question.  It  is  so  great  and  sublime,  that  all  other 
problems  which  time  may  bear  in  its  folds  must  wait  in 
silence.  The  whole  of  old  Europe  is  waiting  with  bated 
breath  for  the  fulfilling  of  things  which  are  coming. 

The  political  events  are  but  the  surface,  but  a  rip- 
ple of  what  is  raging  in  the  depths  of  history,  at  the^ 
bottom  of  social  life.  He  who  has  eyes  to  see,  sees 
how  every  rising  tide  of  freedom  has  in  the  last  decades 
been  thrown  back  by  an  ebb  twice  as  strong.  In  all 
leading  countries  of  Europe  every  political  step  forward 
is  followed  by  a  forcible  reaction.  The  tri-colored  free- 
dom alternates  with  Caesarism,  Republics  with  Empires, 
lively  enthusiasm  with  flabby  apathy,  each  new  era  of  lib- 
eralism is  followed  by  a  Bismarck.  The  English  Parlia- 
ment disestablishes  the  Irish  Church  and  carries  Crimes 
Aets  which  exceed  in  severity  Prussian  martial  law. 
France,  in  the  person  of  M.  Ollivier,1  shows  a  strange  at- 
titude. Standing  fast  on  one  leg,  she  moves  the  other 
forward  and  backward,  as  if  working  the  spinning- 
wheel  of  time.  The  wheel  is  diligently  kept  in  motion, 
but  no  yarn  comes  out  of  it.  Neither  in  Paris,  nor  in 
London,  neither  in  Madrid  nor  in  Naples,  neither  in  Ber- 
lin nor  in  Vienna.  O,  ye  short-sighted  and  narrow- 
minded,  who  cannot  give  up  the  fad  of  the  moderate 
organic  progress !  Don't  you  perceive  that  all  your  great 

1  This  was  written  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  1870. 


IOO  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

liberal  passions  sink  to  the  level  of  mere  trifling,  because 
the  great  question  of  social  salvation  is  on  the  order 
of  the  day?  Don't  you  perceive  that  struggle  and  de- 
struction must  precede  peace  and  construction,  and  that 
chaotic  accumulation  of  material  is  the  necessary  condi- 
tion of  systematic  organization  just  as  the  calm  precedes 
the  tempest  and  the  latter  the  general  purification  of  the 
air?  Neither  the  emancipation  of  nationalities  nor  that 
of  women,  neither  the  reorganization  of  school  nor  that 
of  education  in  general,  neither  the  reduction  of  standing 
armies  nor  that  of  taxation  —  neither  of  those  demands 
can  be  satisfactorily  taken  in  hand  before  the  working 
class  is  freed  from  the  fetters  which  keep  them  riveted  to 
starvation,  sorrow  and  misery.  History  stands  still,  be- 
cause she  gathers,  force  for  a  great  catastrophe. 

Social-democracy  believes  in  the  conquering  power  of 
truth,  hopes  for  the  salvation  from  material  and  mental 
slavery,  and  deeply  desires  justice  for  all. 

The  practical  and  the  successful,  the  pharisees  and 
the  scribes,  the  selfish  and  the  hypocrites  think  us  there- 
fore hopelessly  fantastic.  They  argue  that  there  have 
always  been  lucky  and  unlucky,  rich  and  poor,  master 
and  servants,  and  they  illogically  conclude  that  this  state 
of  things  will  endure  forever  and  ever.  They  don't  con- 
ceive the  possibility  of  salvation,  because  they  don't  un- 
derstand the  people.  The  people  are  not  a  mass  of  pleas- 
ure-seeking loafers.  They  despise  the  finery  of  your 
pseudo-culture.  They  desire  a  systematic  organization 
of  our  economic  life  which  shall  make  impossible  the 
gluttony  of  the  few  and  the  privations  of  the  many,  but 
which  shall  secure  plenty  of  the  necessaries  for  all. 
Our  kingdom  differs  toto  coelo  from  yours.  And 
your  kingdom,  the  social  order  of  to-day,  have  you  con- 
structed it  consciously,  or  is  it  not  true  that  you  have 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  IOI 

organized  it  instinctively,  experimentally,  in  the  course  of 
centuries?  Consider  the  frugal  needs  of  our  people  and 
at  the  same  time  the  modern  fertility  of  labor,  and  ask 
yourselves  if  the  instinct  alone  would  not  be  sufficient  to 
teach  us  how  to  supply  adequately  our  needs  with  the  help 
of  the  existing  means  of  production?  However,  social  - 
democracy  does  not  rely  on  instinctive  feeling  only.  In 
contradistinction  to  the  present  system  of  production 
which  works  without  clear  purpose  and  measure,  social- 
democracy  is  based  on  a  clear  comprehension  of  the  scope 
and  the  tendencies  and  the  aims  of  modern  economic  life 
according  to  which  it  consciously  attempts  to  reconstruct 
human  society. 

Conscious,  systematic  organisation  of  social  labor  is 
the  redeemer  of  m-odern  times. 

II. 

Before  we  proceed  with  our  thesis  let  us,  dear  friends, 
sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  essence  of  our  first  sermon. 
In  the  social-democratic  movement  we  have  found  a  new 
form  of  religion,  inasmuch  as  both  are  striving  for  the 
same  end :  the  salvation  of  man  from  poverty  with  which 
he  helplessly  began  his  struggle  for  existence  in  the  midst 
of  a  world  of  adversities.  Even  the  most  superstitious 
soul  cannot  claim  for  religion  more  than  the  success  of 
spiritual  salvation.  The  pagan  gods  have  scarcely  any 
share  in  that  spiritual  world,  while  the  Tri-personal  God 
of  Christianity  could  only  mitigate  the  misery  of  the  peo- 
ple by  making  it  a  virtue.  I  shall  not  deny  that  this 
doctrine  was  beneficial  for  a  time.  As  long  as  man 
had  neither  the  capacity  nor  the  means  to  throw  off  his 
cross,  resignation  was  not  only  a  divine  balm,  but  also 
an  effective  discipline  which  trained  him  for  the  rigorous 


IO2  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

mental  work  civilization  requires.  Mind  was  cultivated 
by  religion.  But  what  purpose  could  such  a  culture 
serve  if  it  didn't  enable  us  to  cultivate  the  real  world 
and  to  improve  material  conditions  with  the  help  of  the 
mind?  I  am  quite  aware,  my  friends,  that  Christianity 
disowns  this  only  earthly  reason  of  its  existence ;  I  am 
quite  aware,  that  Christianity  claims  its  Kingdom  not  to 
be  of  this  world,  and  that  its  only  mission  was  the  sal- 
vation of  our  immortal  soul.  We  know,  however,  that 
we  do  not  always  achieve  what  we  intend  to  achieve, 
and  that  we  don't  really  always  do  what  we  mean  to  do. 
We  distinguish  intentions  from  realizations.  And  the 
materialistic  social-democrat  has  made  it  his  special  duty, 
to  judge  people  not  by  their  flashes  of  thought,  but  by 
their  palpable  actions.  Indeed,  the  aim  of  religion  can 
only  be  attained  by  material  culture,  by  a  cultivation  of 
the  material.  Work  we  called  the  redeemer  of  humanity. 
Science  and  mechanical  arts,  mental  and  manual  labor, 
are,  like  God-father  and  Son,  two  different  forms  of  one 
and  the  same  being.  This  truth  I  should  like  to  call  the 
cardinal  dogma  of  the  social-democratic  church,  if  so- 
cial-democracy could  be  called  a  church,  and  reasonable 
knowledge  a  dogma.  Science  has  been  an  idle  speculation 
as  long  as  it  didn't  reach  the  truth  that  thinking,  perceiv- 
ing and  learning  required  external  objects  and  sense-im- 
pressions. The  combination  of  the  activity  of  the  brains 
and  the  senses  distinguishes  natural  science  from  all  an- 
cient speculative  sciences.  The  science  of  the  ancients  was 
largely  speculation,  that  is,  they  believed  it  possible  to 
evolve  truth  by  mental  activity  alone,  without  the  help  of 
external  objects  and  experience.  But  the  result  thus  ob- 
tained was  no  science.  No  wonder,  that  the  contents  of 
many  a  library  of  folio-volumes  with  their  wooden  and 
pigskin  bindings  have  now  chiefly  an  antiquarian  value. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  IO3 

On  the  other  hand,  the  craftsmen  of  the  past  did  not 
sever  manual  from  mental  labor,  and  though  their  hand- 
work has  largely  been  consumed  or  damaged,  yet  the 
science  of  those  practical  investigators  has  been  carefully 
guarded  by  tradition  and  handed  down,  nearly  unim- 
paired, from  generation  to  generation.  There  are  among 
us  a  good  many  people  who,  instead  of  regarding  science 
as  a  handmaid  to  civilization,  idolize  and  worship  it  with 
boundless  and  servile  admiration  as  something  preternat- 
ural. They  are  like  the  barbarians  who  turned  the  nat- 
ural and  social  law  into  a  divinity  and  thus  deprived  them- 
selves of  the  power  to  control  that  law  and  to  use  it 
for  the  benefit  of  mankind.  It  is  incumbent  upon  so- 
cial-democracy to  destroy  both  the  religious  and  the 
scientific  superstition.  Man  shall  not  look  up  to  science, 
but  shall  draw  it  down  to  earthly  purposes.  The  mental 
shall  be  the  tool  of  manual  labor.  With  this  we  by 
no  means  disparage  the  just  claims  of  science. 
The  manifest  futility  of  mere  speculative  brooding, 
the  demonstrated  barrenness  of  pure  reason,  may 
be  a  lesson  for  the  learned  profession,  that  there  can  be 
no  science  without  the  action  of  our  senses  upon  ma- 
terial objects.  Conversely,  let  the  craftsmen  learn  from 
the  wonderful  results  of  modern  industry  that  labor 
needs  the  co-operation  of  science. 

The  mutual  permeation  going  on  for  centuries  of  those 
two  forms  of  activity  helped  humanity  to  reach  that  point 
where  the  foundation-stone  to  the  temple  of  social-de- 
mocracy can  be  laid.  It  consists  in  the  power  of  our 
material  production,  in  the  productivity  of  modern  in- 
dustry. But  let  us  take  care  not  to  think  in  this  con- 
nection of  mental  power  only!  The  labor,  which  has 
been  accumulated  in  the  course  of  ages,  does  not  con- 
sist of  mental  or  scientific  achievements  only,  but  to  a 


IO4  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

much  higher  degree  in  the  material  wealth  existing 
around  us,  insofar  as  it  constitutes  a  necessary  instru- 
ment of  modern  labor.  Although  this  instrument  or 
wealth  is  at  present  under  the  control  of  private  indiznd- 
nals,  yet  the  social-democrat  must  learn  to  conceive  that 
it  could  not  be  the  creation  of  private  efforts.  All  our 
material  wealth  as  well  as  our  scientific  and  literary 
achievements  can  only  be  due  to  the  collective  work  of 
many  and  various  generations,  countries  and  races,  and 
is  therefore,  despite  the  private  control  under  which  it  is 
at  present,  the  collective  product  of  all. 

Great  inventions  and  discoveries,  which  are  bound  up 
with  certain  names,  are  but  nominally  the  property  of 
those  famous  individuals.  They  are  in  fact,  like  the 
material  achievements,  the  result  of  collective  labor,  the 
product  of  society.  And  it  is  but  a  survival  of  the  bar- 
barian past  to  regard  great  historic  names  not  only 
as  brilliant  leaders,  but  also  as  demigods,  though  such 
opinions  are  still  prevalent  among  many  learned  as  well  as 
ignorant  men.  To  be  sure,  had  not  Columbus  made  use 
of  the  accumulated  means,  ideas  and  aspirations  to  un- 
dertake the  discovery  of  America,  some  other  sailor 
would  have  done  it;  the  talent  and  courage  requisite 
for  such  a  voyage  are  by  no  means  rare  among  sailors 
generally. 

Or  as  Thomas  Buckle  says  of  James  Watt,  the  inventor 
of  the  steam-engine :  "  He  would  have  surely  not 
achieved  what  he  has,  without  his  predecessors."  This 
may  be  applied  to  all  men  who  distinguished  themselves 
and  achieved  great  successes  as  well  as  to  common  peo- 
ple. 

It  is,  dear  friends,  the  supreme  duty  of  science  to  re- 
duce the  extraordinary,  i.  e.,  which  appears  to  the  general 
superstition  as  extraordinary,  to  the  level  of  the  ordi- 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  IO5 

nary,  the  usual,  the  natural  or  normal.  The  saints  and 
the  sanctuaries,  the  religious  and  the  worldly  ones,  must 
disappear  in  order  that  the  only  eternal  and  true  sanctu- 
ary :  humanity  or  mankind,  may  live.  To  make  brother- 
hood a  reality ;  to  make  it  impossible  to  despise  any  one, 
it  is  necessary  to  cease  to  humbly  look  up  to  any  one. 
The  social-democrat  should  not  stare  at  the  chief  of  a 
republic  as  the  peasant  does  at  the  priest;  he  should  not 
regard  him  as  a  biped  God,  as  the  chosen  supreme  master. 
We  are  all  born  chiefs,  while  the  elected  chief  is  simply 
the  temporary  administrator  of  the  ordinary  state  of 
affairs,  the  business  manager  the  like  of  whom  there  are 
hundreds  among  the  people.  The  tribe  of  David  should 
intermingle  with  the  tribe  of  Melchizedek  and  form  one 
tribe  of  citizens  with  equal  rights. 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  doctrine  of  our  social-demo- 
cratic church,  the  foundation-stone  of  which  is  the  ac- 
cumulated material  and  mental  wealth,  and  which  teaches 
us  to  believe  that  that  heavy  stone  had  been  hewn  and 
brought  to  light  neither  entirely  without  nor  altogether  by 
the  effort  of  certain  select  individuals  and  noble  fam- 
ilies, but  by  the  exceedingly  hard  labor,  material  and 
mental,  of  the  whole  society.  Only  knaves  and  fools  call 
this  a  system  of  crude  levelling-up.  Those,  however, 
who  have  studied  our  church-fathers  know  that  our  social 
hierarchy,  the  difference  between  the  great  and  the  small, 
the  virtuous  and  the  wicked,  the  noble  and  the  common, 
the  learned  and  the  untaught,  have  only  been  established 
in  order  to  endow  the  few  with  privileges  and  to  keep 
the  masses  in  servitude.  No,  fellow-citizens !  the  equal- 
ity of  social-democracy  is  by  no  means  a  fantastic  equal- 
ity. It  does  not  exclude  diversity.  Nature  has  given 
us  the  same  desire  to  satisfy  our  hunger,  to  clothe  our 
body  and  to  develop  our  capacities.  Men  have  always 


IO6  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

and  everywhere  the  same  imperious  instinct  of  self-pres- 
ervation and  the  same  desire  to  live  in  enjoyable  activity, 
without  misery  or  servitude.  The  equality  in  the  desire 
does  not  interfere  with  the  natural  diversity,  with  the 
peculiar  talents  and  proclivities  given  to  each  of  us. 
Just  as  in  nature  as  a  matter  of  fact  equality  and  diver- 
sity intermingle  and  form  one  united  whole,  so  will  the 
social  order  of  the  future  make  all  men  equal  in  rank  and 
value,  by  giving  them  the  equal  right  to  the  enjoyment 
of  their  individual  life,  without  obliterating  the  diversity 
which  requires  of  every  one  to  act  according  to  his  gifts. 
A  new  era  has  dawned  upon  mankind.  It  bids  us  ap- 
proach its  message  in  the  light  of  new  ideas  and  a  new 
understanding. 

The  first  and  foremost  thing  in  this  respect  is  to  revise 
our  present  notion  of  the  supreme  being  and  our  idea  of 
perfection.  Until  now  we  have  been  taught  to  regard 
and  to  revere  the  sublime,  the  supreme,  the  divine  and 
the  perfect  as  a  single  thing  or  being.  Here  the  bar- 
barians found  it  in  a  tree,  there  in  a  golden  calf,  then  in 
the  thunder  and  lightning  as  the  fierce  justice,  finally  the 
Christians  deified  the  spirit  of  love.  Why  was  the  spirit 
of  love  so  imperfect?  Because  he  lacked  the  antithesis, 
the  flesh  and  bone.  We  shall  give  him  reality  when  we 
search  for  the  perfect,  the  great  and  sublime  not  in  one 
single  thing,  nor  in  one  single  quality,  nor  in  one  particu- 
lar personality,  but  in  the  communion  and  intimate  con- 
nection of  all  men  and  things.  Various  peoples  and 
various  ages  idolized  the  most  diverse  things  as  the  su- 
preme perfection.  Here  it  was  bodily  strength  and  mar- 
tial prowess,  there  it  was  Samaritan  pity  and  spiritual 
power.  But  none  of  these  single  things  has  stood  the 
test  of  time.  The  deified  qualities  have  proved  to  be  as 
transient  as  the  gods  themselves,  and  as  the  peoples  who 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  IO/ 

have  for  a  long  time  been  looking  for  the  true  God,  until 
the  truth  has  forced  itself  to  the  front  that  men  as  well  as 
things  are  all  equally  sublime,  equally  perfect  and  divine. 
I  hear  already  the  shrill  voice  of  the  heretics,  i.  e.,  of  the 
adversaries  of  our  gospel,  charging  us  with  iniquitous 
blasphemy.  Our  respectable  citizens  cannot  perceive  a 
state  of  things  without  masters  and  servants,  without 
nobles  and  commoners,  without  virtuous  and  wicked. 
They  think  it  quite  strange  to  ascribe  the  same  value  to 
the  crooked  as  to  the  straight,  to  the  donkey  as  to  the 
miller.  Verily,  I  tell  you,  the  more  reasonable  the  miller 
the  more  will  he  value  his  donkey.  Both  of  them  are  in 
this  point  equal,  that  they  serve  each  other,  and  that 
either  of  them  is,  in  the  right  time  and  the  right  place, 
a  valuable  part  of  a  united  whole.  Only  that  and  no 
more  is  the  meaning  of  the  social-democratic  doctrine  of 
equality.  The  privileged  divinity  of  the  individual  must 
be  abolished  if  the  general  deviltry  should  once  for  all 
be  done  away  with.  Nothing  shall  be  rejected  as  im- 
pure, everything  shall  be  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  taber- 
nacle, that  it  may  be  able,  in  its  time  and  station,  to 
serve  for  the  best  of  all.  Humanity,  knowing  how  to 
live  in  mutual  service  and  to  supplement  one  another 
with  the  things  of  this  world,  is  the  bodily  representation 
of  the  supreme  being  and  of  divine  perfection. 

The  social-democratic  equality,  my  friends,  is  there- 
fore something  quite  different  from  the  insipid  political 
equality  to  which  the  liberal  parties  want  to  treat  the 
people.  They  want  political  equality,  that  we  may  help 
them  to  establish  a  state  of  things  in  which  they  could 
use  us  unreservedly  for  the  preservation  and  augmenta- 
tion of  their  wealth,  while  the  aim  and  end  of  our  equal- 
ity is  to  restore  the  wealth  to  those  who  in  the  course  of 
centuries  created  it  by  hard,  ceaseless  toil,  namely,  to  the 


IO8  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

people.  The  wealth  of  to-day  is  the  instrument  of  future 
labor.  In  the  present  it  serves  private  ends,  in  the  future 
it  shall  serve  social  ends.  The  restoration  of  that  in- 
strument to  the  people  shall  not  take  the  form  of  a  divi- 
sion. It  shall  not  be  divided  up  in  the  manner  which 
obtains  to-day,  where  some  get  more  than  their  due, 
while  some  get  nothing  at  all  and  are  consequently 
forced  into  the  servitude  of  the  rich;  nor  shall  it  be 
divided  up  in  equal  but  petty  shares  so  that  each  individ- 
ual is  to  start  out  on  his  own  hook  on  a  life  of  drudgery, 
or  is  to  run  the  risk  of  being  cheated  out  of  his  heritage 
by  the  jugglery  of  the  cunning.  No,  that  instrument 
shall  not  be  subjected  to  any  partition,  but  it  shall  be 
handled  with  organized  skill  by  co-operative  labor;  the 
product  only  shall  be  divided  and  consumed.  That  is 
the  communism  of  social-democracy. 

While  Nature  ruled  with  the  overpowering  force  of 
fate  or  of  a  god,  and  cowed  humanity  into  poverty,  it 
might  have  been  useful  to  entrust  certain  individuals  or 
certain  classes  with  the  power  of  government  that  they 
might  serve  as  guides  for  the  people.  The  ancient,  the 
feudal  and  to-day's  bourgeois  order  of  slavery  are  pro- 
gressive steps  to  the  organization  of  labor.  Now,  how- 
ever, the  time  is  approaching  which  calls  upon  us  to  take 
a  much  farther  step  than  the  liberal  and  democratic 
parties  are  dreaming  of.  By  the  productivity  of  labor 
the  people  have  arrived  at  the  point  where  they  want  that 
all  class-domination  shall  cease.  They  feel  themselves 
competent  to  continue  the  economic  development  without 
the  help  of  privileged  leaders.  The  liberty,  with  which  the 
bourgoisie  goads  the  people  into  a  struggle  against 
the  landed  interests  or  against  bureaucracy ;  the  equality 
and  fraternity,  which  priestcraft  promises  us  with  the 
purpose  of  binding  us  to  it  with  ropes  of  superstition, 


THE   RELIGION    OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  lOQ 

turns  into  the  real  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity  of  so- 
cial-democracy. 

If  religion  consists  in  the  belief  in  supernatural  beings 
and  forces,  in  the  belief  in  gods  and  spirits,  then  social- 
democracy  is  without  religion.  In  its  place  we  put  the 
consciousness  of  the  insufficiency  of  the  individual,  who 
needs  therefore  to  his  completion  and  perfection  the  co- 
operation of  the  whole,  and  consequently  acknowledges 
his  submission  to  the  whole.  Civilized  human  society 
is  the  supreme  being  in  which  we  believe;  on  its  trans- 
formation to  socialism  we  build  our  hope.  Such  a  hu- 
manity will  make  love  a  reality,  of  which  the  religious 
enthusiasts  have  only  been  dreaming.  The  deluded  and 
the  obdurate,  who  cannot  believe  in  the  social-democratic 
development  of  society,  may  feel  the  necessity  of  trans- 
ferring their  hope  from  this  earth  to  a  Hereafter.  Not 
so  the  social-democrat.  In  order  to  really  participate  in 
the  consolation  which  the  believer  finds  in  the  idea  of  a 
heavenly  father  who  protects  and  defends  his  children, 
we  are  striving  for  a  society  which  shall  assist  the  help- 
less individual  in  all  his  needs.  We  call  upon  society  — 
and  by  virtue  of  its  accumulated  wealth  we  are  entitled 
to  call  upon  society  —  that  it  shall  vouchsafe  to  each  of 
its  members  not  only  work,  but  also  daily  bread,  and  that 
it  shall  feed  the  hungry,  clothe  the  naked,  care  for  the 
sick,  in  short,  it  shall  carry  out  the  work  of  love  and 
mercy.  We  appeal  to  society,  not  only  to  call  itself  hu- 
man but  to  be  human.  In  the  place  of  religion,  social- 
democracy  puts  humanity,  which  shall  no  more  rest  on 
the  basis  of  an  ethical  commandment,  but  on  the  recog- 
nition that  its  savior  can  only  be  found  in  co-operative, 
brotherly  work :  in  economic  communism.  The  original 
sin,  from  which  mankind  has  been  suffering,  is  selfish- 
ness. Moses  and  the  prophets,  all  religious  founders 


IIO  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

and  legislators  together  have  been  unable  to  extirpate  it. 
"  The  sin  dwelleth  in  the  flesh  as  the  nail  in  the  wall/' 
No  preaching  or  teaching  and  commanding  could  eradi- 
cate it,  for  the  whole  constitution  of  our  present  society 
hinges  upon  that  nail.  Bourgeois  society  rests  on  the 
selfish  distinction  of  mine  and  thine,  rests  on  social  war, 
on  competition,  on  the  cunning  devices  of  getting  the 
best  of  each  other. 

In  conclusion  let  me  point  out  the  moral :  it  demands  — 
and  its  whole  being  depends  on  this  demand  —  that  we 
reconcile  the  antithesis  between  love  and  selfishness ;  that 
we  constitute  our  society  on  this  reconciliation ;  that  men 
shall  join  hands  and  with  united  strength  and  labor  force 
Nature  to  yield  us  our  daily  bread  in  plenty. 

III. 
Friends: 

Before  we  proceed  to  deal  with  the  meaning  of  the 
moral,  drawn  from  our  previous  remarks,  I  should  like 
to  call  your  attention  to  the  essential  characteristics,  to 
the  great  and  general  outlines  of  religion.  I  shall  not 
speak  of  any  special  denomination :  neither  of  the  Chris- 
tian, Jewish,  Mohammedan  or  pagan  beliefs,  but  of  idol- 
atry in  general. 

We  have  found  that  religion  and  social-democracy 
have  this  in  common,  that  they  both  strive  for  salvation. 
Yet,  social-democracy  is  in  this  respect  more  advanced 
that  it  does  not  look  for  salvation  in  the  realm  of  spirit, 
but  in  the  world  of  material  realities,  taking  human  spirit 
only  as  its  guide.  The  need  for  salvation,  the  misery  of 
the  primitive  man  is  the  psychological  germ  out  of  which 
religion  evolved.  This  perplexity  and  helplessness  in 
the  midst  of  a  world  of  adversities  causes  man  to  look 
for  omnipotence  and  perfection  in  some  other  quarters, 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  III 

and  suggested  to  him  the  worship  of  animals,  stars,  trees, 
lightning,  winds,  certain  heroic  personalities,  etc.  But 
eventually  in  the  long  run  experience  inevitably  taught 
him  that  those  things  are  themselves  powerless.  Man 
took  a  step  further  and  looked  for  the  supreme  being  no 
more  in  near-by  and  tangible  things,  but  in  a  spirit  reign- 
ing in  the  clouds.  Removed  from  experience  as  the  new 
godhead  was,  it  became  more  difficult  to  get  some  reliable 
information  about  it.  Yet  modern  science,  which  suc- 
ceeded in  fathoming  many  a  mystery,  penetrated  also  to 
the  bottom  of  the  secret  of  religion. 

The  "  wealthy  and  cultured,"  whose  care  for  science 
extends  but  so  far  as  it  helps  them  to  accumulate  treasure 
and  to  preserve  their  privileges,  are  in  fact  the  mean 
materialists  to  whom  nothing  is  of  more  serious  concern 
than  the  selfish  cultivation  of  the  body.  It  is  these  peo- 
ple who  are  fain  to  declare  that  we  must  not  discuss  re- 
ligion, as  nothing  could  be  known  about  it.  Against  all 
such  assertions  I  may  assure  you,  friends,  that  religion, 
despite  its  obscurity  and  lofty  mysteriousness,  did  not 
escape  the  piercing  eye  of  science,  which  penetrated  into 
its  most  remote  and  darkest  corners.  Just  as  we  know 
as  a  certainty  that  two  and  two  equals  four,  or  that  there 
are  no  two  mountains  without  a  valley,  on  earth  or  in 
heaven  or  anywhere  else,  so  do  we  know  what  and  who 
religion  and  God  are,  where  they  begin  and  end,  where 
they  come  from  and  how  they  dissolve. 

The  ruling  classes  and  their  conscious  or  unconscious 
flunkeys  have  an  interest  to  contend  against  the  austerity 
of  religion,  as  it  interferes  with  their  worldly  enjoyments. 
For  those  who  really  believe  and  trust  in  an  eternal 
treasure  which  is  eaten  neither  by  rust  nor  by  moths, 
lose  their  appetite  for  the  evanescent  joys  of  the  world. 
Indeed,  religious  as  well  as  political  liberalism  is  closely 


112  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

connected  with  property  and  with  the  mode  of  business 
prevailing  to-day.  The  aristocratic  families  of  the  past 
were  the  friends  and  followers  of  the  monks,  for  both 
had  their  kitchen  and  cellar  supplied  by  socage  and  tithes. 
The  great  houses  of  the  present,  which  "  earn  "  their 
sumptuous  living  by  profit-making  off  the  labor  of  others, 
and  this  on  so  liberal,  i.  e.,  plentiful,  a  scale,  are  more 
than  alienated  from  the  orthodox  preacher  of  Christian 
discipline  and  sobriety ;  their  attitude  towards  him  is  full 
of  antipathy.  Yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that 
liberalism  is  serious  in  its  unbelief.  They  can't  be  seri- 
ous. Their  privileged  social  position  condemns  the 
"  wealthy  and  cultured  "  to  that  nauseous  luke-warmness, 
to  that  indifferentism  which  is  neither  cold  nor  warm. 
Their  religious  freemasonry,  their  protests  against  super- 
stition—  by  the  way,  all  belief  is  superstition  —  cannot 
be  serious,  for  the  religious  discipline  is  one  of  the  main- 
stays of  class-rule.  Though  they  have  lost  all  belief  in 
God  they  never  tire  of  reminding  us  of  his  command- 
ments :  "  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's 
.  .  .  Be  subject  to  principalities  and  powers,  obey 
magistrates  .  .  .  Pray  and  work  .  .  .  Bear  the 
cross  in  all  humility  and  patience  .  .  ."  While  they 
are  fiercely  striving  to  climb  up  the  ladder  of  might  and 
wealth  they  actually  delude  us,  and  perhaps  also  them- 
selves, into  believing  that  they  trust  in  God,  who  is  sup- 
posed to  humble  the  proud  and  to  exalt  the  humble.  The 
liberal  bunglers  are  easily  to  be  recognized  as  religious 
hypocrites.  The  great  captains  of  industry,  with  their 
liveried  and  titled  flunkeys  as  professors,  justices,  law- 
yers, etc.,  are  passionately  devoted  to  freedom  of  trade 
and  competition  as  well  as  to  freedom  of  religion. 
Every  man  shall  be  free  to  believe  as  his  conscience  dic- 
tates. But  woe  to  those  who  try  to  live  up  to  such 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  113 

maxims  and  free  themselves  of  all  religion!  You  may 
belong  to  a  nonconformist  congregation  or  to  an  unde- 
nominational school.  But  to  have  no  religion  at  all,  or 
to  belong  to  a  secular  school  —  why,  that's  positively 
disgraceful !  That's  past  all  bearing !  Such  things  must 
be  put  a  stop  to!  If  the  people  do  no  more  believe  in 
anything,  who  will  sanctify  our  property  and  supply  the 
dear  fatherland  with  food  for  guns  or  cannon  ? 

The  small  craftsman  who  feels  and  sees  that  the  indus- 
trial revolution  is  undoing  him,  does  not  know  and  does 
not  want  to  know  of  the  inventions  and  discoveries  of 
science.  This  is  quite  the  case  with  our  "  wealthy  and 
cultured  "  in  matters  of  religion.  They  are  used  to  say : 
If  there  is  no  positive  proof  for  the  truths  of  religion, 
there  is  still  less  any  proof  against  religion.  Because 
their  interests  are  endangered  by  such  knowledge,  they 
refuse  to  admit  that  more  than  half  a  century  ago  Feuer- 
bach  particularly  had  brought  the  conclusive  and  irre- 
futable proof  that  all  religion  is  simply  a  substitute  for 
human  ignorance. 

The  human  race  has  this  peculiar  distinction,  that  at 
different  times  and  places  it  values  different  things  and 
qualities  as  the  highest  beyond  all  measure ; —  that,  unlike 
the  apes  which  but  imitate  what  was  shown  them,  hu- 
manity revolutionizes  its  highest  standards,  in  short,  it 
makes  history.  Of  course,  not  that  history  as  taught  in 
our  schools,  which  is  simply  a  miserable  index  of  the 
births  and  deaths  of  princes;  an  enumeration,  of  wars, 
battles  and  treaties,  while  its  real  import  consists  in  the 
great  and  solemn  evidence  that  mankind,  its  generations 
and  peoples,  constitutes  a  living  and  continually  develop- 
ing organism,  each  part  of  which  serves  the  whole.  The 
aim  or  postulate  of  this  development  is  to  subdue  all 
existing  matter  and  forces  to  human  needs,  to  cultivate 


114  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

nature,  and  to  bring  system  into  the  world  with  the  help 
of  our  mind.     This  process  is  going  on  slowly,  by  fits 
and  starts.     Those  who  by  the  study  of  nature  and  by 
the  insight  into  its  boundless  possibilities  attained  to  a 
wise  humility,  recognize  without  hesitation  that  the  his- 
toric progress,  though  its  aim  is  to  make  human  con- 
sciousness the  lord  of  the  world,  is  still  far  from  being  a 
matter  of  consciousness.     It  is  much  more  the  instinct, 
the  nature  of  matter,  which  impels  its  continual  develop- 
ment, through  the  various  geological  periods  to  the  for- 
mation of  life,  which  began  with  the  most  primitive  life- 
cells   and   developed   to   higher   forms   with   plants  and 
animals  by  variation  and  natural  selection,  until  its  high- 
est product,  man  gifted  with  reason,  was  brought  forth. 
The  end  and  aim  of  the  evolutionary  process  is  to  com- 
prehend the  manifold  phenomena  of  nature  and  history 
in  order  to  enable  man  to  consider  and  to  use  the  human 
race,  its  ethnological  and  political  organizations  and  all 
existing   mental    and    material'  energies    as    an    organic 
whole.     In  the  course  of  his  development  man  passion- 
ately idolized  anything  that  happened  to  range  high  in 
his  estimation,  be  it  an  animal,  a  plant,  a  star,  a  human 
being  or  a   law.     God  —  the  essence   of  religion  —  ap- 
pears thus  as  a  changeable  and  temporary,  and  not  as  a 
permanent    and     eternal,     character.     The     divine    has 
changed  so  often  that  its  evanescence  became  manifest  to 
the  scientific  mind.     Science  has  therefore  formulated  the 
proposition :  That  which  religion  values  beyond  measure 
is  in  historic  reality  but  temporarily  and  locally  valuable. 
Religious   people   are   wont   to   assert   that   all   races, 
savage  or  civilized,  have  some  sort  of  religion  and  believe 
in  God.     From  which  they  infer  that  religion  is  inherent 
in  man  and  needs,  therefore,  no  further  demonstration. 
That  assertion  is,  however,  only  in  so  far  true  as  people 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  11$ 

without  experience  are  credulous,  and  aH  the  more  so, 
the  less  experience  and  culture  they  possess.  Nowadays 
it  is  but  peasants  and  women  that  are  the  true  believers. 
Those  who  have  eyes  to  see  perceive  that  there  is  not  one, 
but  many  religions,  and  not  one  God,  but  many  Gods. 
As  man  attains  to  the  understanding  of  the  world  only  by 
degrees,  he  idolizes  many  things,  to-day  the  sun,  to- 
morrow the  moon,  one  time  the  dog,  as  the  Persians,  at 
another  time  the  cat,  as  the  Egyptians,  until  he  finally 
gains  the  social-democratic  truth  that  nothing  and  every- 
thing is  divine,  nothing  and  everything  does  invaluable 
services.  What  the  heathen  valued  in  their  gods,  in  Bac- 
chus —  wine,  in  Venus  —  love,  etc. ;  what  the  Israelites 
valued  in  Jahve  —  the  punishing,  reproving  and  law- 
making;  what  the  Christians  worship  in  their  God  —  the 
incarnation,  suffering  and  dying  for  others,  boundless 
love  and  mercy,  contempt  for  worldly  matters,  abstemi- 
ousness, celibacy,  etc. —  all  this,  my  friends,  is  to  be  val- 
ued temporarily  and  locally,  but  never  to  be  idolized. 
Not  the  objects  of  religion  are  reprehensible,  but  the 
essence  of  religion,  which  is  boundless  and  inordinate  in 
its  veneration. 

The  essence  of  religion  consists  in  this,  that  certain 
phenomena  of  nature  and  history,  which,  according  to 
time  and  circumstances,  acquired  an  unusual  importance, 
have  been  personified  and  put  on  so  high  a  pinnacle  that 
they  appear  to  be  independent  of  time  and  space. 

The  religious  truth  is  but  a  natural  truth  standing  on 
its  head.  Not  God  created  man,  but  always  and  every- 
where man  created  God  in  his  own  image.  If  some  out- 
of-the-way  people,  possessed  of  wisdom,  happen  to  get 
the  sacred  books  of  our  churches,  they  will  learn  nothing 
about  God  and  heaven,  but  a  good  deal  about  the  civiliza- 
tion of  men  who  wrote  and  esteemed  those  things.  How 


Il6  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

near  our  time  is  to  giving  up  all  religion,  is  evident  from 
the  vague  and  confused  ideas  now  circulating  about  God 
and  his  attributes.  While  man  comes  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  existence  of  all  other  things  because  he  had  known 
before  how  and  what  they  are,  he  wants  to  be  convinced 
of  the  existence  of  God  before  knowing  anything  in  par- 
ticular about  his  nature,  whether  he  is  of  human  or  in- 
human form,  small  or  large,  black-  or  blue-eyed,  male 
or  female.  The  theologians,  being  themselves  in  the 
dark,  label  such  questions  materialistic  and  improper. 
But  the  more  advanced  thinkers  know  already  that  the 
very  few  things  their  colleagues  assume  to  know  about 
God  when  they  qualify  him  as  just,  good,  wise,  almighty, 
etc. —  that  all  those  qualities  are  not  religious,  but  pro- 
fane and  earthly  qualities,  which  we  may  find  here  on 
earth  without  taking  the  trouble  of  going  up  to  heaven. 
Such  qualifications  are  called  by  the  scholars  "  anthropo- 
morphistic,"  that  is,  where  man  over-estimates  justice, 
he  describes  a  just  God,  and  where  he  has  a  liking  for 
human  flesh,  he  treats  his  God  therewith.  The  advanced 
theologians  are  well  aware  of  that  and  decline  to  give  any 
description  of  their  objects  of  worship.  But  is  it  not 
senseless  to  assert  the  existence  of  something  and  at  the 
same  time  to  confess  complete  ignorance  of  how,  where 
and  what  its  nature  is?  The  more  the  idea  of  God  re- 
cedes into  the  past  the  more  palpable  it  is ;  in  olden  times 
man  knew  everything  about  his  God ;  the  more  modern 
the  form  of  religion  has  become,  the  more  confused  and 
hazy  are  our  religious  ideas.  The  truth  is  that  the  his- 
toric development  of  religion  tends  to  its  gradual  disso- 
lution. 

A  little  while  ago  I  characterized  religion  as  the  sub- 
stitute of  human  ignorance,  that  is,  it  fills  up  the  gaps 
of  knowledge.  Where  the  gaps  are  wide,  there  the  scope 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  II/ 

of  religion  is  wide.  The  whole  life  of  barbarian  tribes, 
their  work  and  their  rest,  their  social  customs  and  laws 
are  under  the  strict  control  of  God.  The  God  of  Abra- 
ham, Isaac  and  Jacob  cares  about  the  most  insignificant 
details ;  he  supervises  the  cleanliness  of  his  people ;  he 
prescribes  how  to  hitch  their  animals  to  the  carriage,  in 
short,  there  is  nothing  left  to  a  true  Israelite  which  is  not 
regulated  by  divine  command.  The  same  may  be  said 
of  all  Asiatic  religions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  civilized 
nations  of  to-day  leave  to  God  those  things  only  whose 
laws  have  not  yet  been  discovered,  as  the  making  of  the 
weather,  the  healing  of  malignant  diseases,  etc.  To  an 
enlightened  liberal  the  blessed  name  of  the  Lord  is  in 
reality  no  more  than  the  A,  the  beginning  of  the  alphabet 
of  his  conception  of  the  world.  Once  he  passes  beyond 
the  beginning,  he  allows  the  world  to  take  its  natural 
course.  To  this  un-Christian  Christian  everything  in  the 
world  is  natural  except  the  beginning,  which  is  unnatural 
and  divine.  It  is  this  consideration  which  stands  in  the 
way  of  his  giving  up  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  God, 
which  has  also  the  advantage  of  keeping  the  lower  orders, 
the  "  illiterate,"  in  check.  The  only  link  which  connects 
this  sham-religion  of  the  Progressive-Liberal  with  the 
Catechism  is  the  so-called  "  moral  world."  But  inasmuch 
as  he  begins  dimly  to  perceive  that  morality,  too,  has  a 
worldly  basis,  his  association  of  ideas  becomes  dim  and 
shadowy.  As  soon  as  we  are  conscious  of  the  fact  that 
the  ethical  had  not  its  roots  in  the  divine  will,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  that  which,  for  social  reasons,  had  become  eth- 
ical receives  subsequently  divine  sanction ; —  as  soon  as 
we  recognize  that  ethics  was  antecedent  to  the  "  Eternal," 
the  Church  loses  the  ground  from  under  its  feet.  If  we 
compare  the  wide  scope  of  religious  life  of  the  pagan 
past,  when  the  trees  and  bushes,  the  hills  and  waters 


Il8  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

teemed  with  gods  and  goddesses ; —  if  we  compare  the 
intense  faith  of  early  Christianity  with  its  manifold  saints 
and  miracles ; —  if  we  compare  all  that  with  the  position 
of  to-day,  when  religion  is  pushed  into  the  background 
by  so  many  other  considerations,  then,  I  think,  no  im- 
partial observer  will  be  able  to  disagree  with  our  propo- 
sition, that  the  progress  or  development  of  religion  con- 
sists in  its  gradual  dissolution.  No  doubt,  this  is  the 
usual  course  of  things  in  the  world.  With  the  first  day 
of  his  life  the  new-born  begins  his  pilgrimage  towards 
the  grave.  And  stronger  words  than  those  I  could  not 
conscientiously  utter  against  religion.  It  is  not  an  eter- 
nal or  heavenly  affair,  but  an  earthly  and  temporal  one. 

The  last  and  strongest  religious  argument,  brought 
forward  by  rather  unprejudiced  minds,  is  the  undeniable 
fitness  of  things  in  nature  or  in  the  universe.  Who 
could  deny  the  wonderful  order  of  the  universe,  its  har- 
mony, organization  and  system?  Apart  from  the  num- 
berless illustrations  usually  brought  in  favor  of  that  argu- 
ment, apart  from  the  green,  blue  and  speckled  cuckoo's 
eggs,  which,  according  to  color  and  volume,  always  fit  in 
with  the  bird's  eggs  to  which  they  are  added,  we  find  in 
every  step  the  proofs  of  a  universal  intelligence  which 
uses  everything  that  is  living  and  existing  as  a  part,  as  a 
suitable  organic  part  of  the  whole.  To  recognize  the 
evolution  or  the  gradual  organization,  not  only  of  nature 
but  also  of  human  society,  is  the  special  task  of  social-dem- 
ocrats. Their  superior  understanding  consists  just  in 
this,  that  they  regard  all  phenomena  of  nature  and  human 
history  as  being  parts  of  the  whole  that  are  involved  in 
the  process  of  evolution,  and  even  such  things  as  religion, 
morality  and  property,  which  are  usually  looked  upon 
as  constant  and  eternal ;  there  is  no  sacred  exception  to 
this  rule.  And  how  could  they  fail  to  recognize  that 


THE   RELIGION   OF    SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  IIQ 

there  is  in  this  whole  something  of  a  higher  life  to  which 
the  individual  parts  are  subordinated?  But  when  recog- 
nizing this,  there  is  no  necessity  of  going  back  to  religion 
and  mysticism.  Experience  has  so  much  sharpened  our 
wits  that  we  spotted  the  rocks  on  which  human  reason, 
in  its  efforts  to  get  at  the  truth,  has  hitherto  often  suf- 
fered shipwreck.  The  learned  marked  them  with  the 
ponderous  name:  anthropomorphism.  It  is  the  manner 
of  the  unsophisticated,  which  is  so  difficult  to  get  rid  of, 
to  measure  and  to  interpret  the  external  world  by  the 
gauge  of  their  own  individual  life.  Because  man  pur- 
sues his  aims  deliberately  and  consciously  he  substitutes 
a  being  in  his  own  image,  gifted  with  deliberative  power 
and  consciousness,  as  the  architect  of  the  system  of  na- 
ture. And  even  among  intelligent  people  whose  sense  of 
criticism  is  so  far  developed  as  to  shake  all  belief  in  a 
personal  God,  we  find  that  they  cannot  do  away  with  all 
philosophic  mysticism;  they  take  refuge  either  in  a  phi- 
losophy of  the  unconscious,  which  attributes  will  and  con- 
ception to  unconscious  things,  or  to  spiritualism  and 
theosophy. 

It  cannot  however  be  denied  that  there  is  in  dead  mat- 
ter a  living  impluse  towards  a  higher  form  of  organiza- 
tion, and  that,  consequently,  the  material  world  is  not 
dead,  but  living.  Yet,  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in  mind 
that  we  can  only  speak  of  its  will  and  purpose  in  a  rel- 
ative and  comparative  sense.  For  the  manifestation  of 
the  universal  intelligence  is  but  gradual.  The  higher  the 
organization  of  matter  the  clearer  the  manifestation  of 
the  intelligence.  We  see  it  in  the  animal  instinct  in  a 
limited  degree  of  clearness  and  it  attains  to  a  pure  ex- 
pression in  the  cerebral  function  of  man,  i.  e.,  in  our 
consciousness.  To  attribute  purpose,  will  and  conception 
to  low-organized  matter  is  therefore  as  wrong  as  to  call 


I2O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

twilight  day  because  of  the  limited  degree  of  light  the 
former  possesses.  And  if  I  ventured  a  little  while  ago 
to  make  use  of  those  terms  it  was  but  with  the  intention 
to  discredit  them  and  to  show  their  relative  meaning. 
To  be  sure,  there  is  reason  in  the  natural  things.  But 
for  this  it  was  possible  for  the  homo  sapiens  to  appear 
without  divine  assistance  on  the  stage  of  history.  Those 
who  recognize  reason,  the  source  of  all  system  and  of  all 
fitness  of  things,  as  a  product  of  nature,  cannot  fail  to 
admit  the  suitability  inherent  in  nature.  Yet,  the  spirit 
of  man  is  the  only  spirit.  This  name  cannot  be  given  to 
the  reason  which  we  find  in  the  orderly  revolutions  of  the 
solar  systems,  or  in  the  cuckoo's  eggs,  or  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  bee's  cell,  or  in  the  working  of  the  ants,  or  in 
the  head  of  apes,  but  solely  to  its  highest  manifestation, 
to  the  consciousness,  to  the  cerebral  function  of  man. 

Our  spirit  is  the  highest  spiritual  being.  But,  my 
pious  friends,  that  is,  my  attentive  friends,  we  must  not 
put  it  on  the  high  pinnacle  of  a  religious  godhead.  High 
and  low  means  in  our  materialistic  philosophy  as  much  as 
more  or  less  organized.  The  less  autonomous  the  parts 
of  a  thing^are,  the  more  they  function  as  organs,  the 
more  interdependent  and  closely  connected  they  are,  the 
more  numerous  and  varied  their  natural  communications 
and  services,  the  higher  is  the  thing  in  the  hierarchy  of 
nature.  Our  consciousness  is  the  universal  center,  the 
universal  means  of  communication.  But  it  does  not  ex- 
ist by  itself,  isolated  in  aristocratic  aloofness  like  our 
Lord  God,  but  it  is  in  its  good  democratic  way  only  a 
point  of  contact,  a  connection  with  all  other  things. 
Even  before  natural  science  mastered  the  art  of  differ- 
entiation and  unification,  the  logic  or  the  science  of  mind 
had  discovered  that  there  is  but  one  species,  namely, 
worldly  things,  while  everything  else  is  but  a  variety. 


THE   RELIGION    OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  121 

The  conscious  and  unconscious,  the  plants  and  animals, 
the  good  and  bad,  all  diversity,  all  antagonisms  of  the 
world  must  be  considered  as  diverse  forms  of  one  and 
the  same  being,  which  gradually  merge  into  each  other, 
carrying  on  a  perpetual  struggle  for  existence,  and  re- 
newing and  perfecting  themselves  through  natural  selec- 
tion. Out  of  chaos  arose  cosmos,  which  gradually 
evolved  reason-gifted  man,  whose  pkasant  duty  it  is  to 
further  the  progress  of  our  world,  to  remove  its  imper- 
fections. His  task  can  be  best  effected  by  studying  and 
organizing  its  forces.  Indeed,  man  has  always  been 
working  at  his  task,  but  until  now  in  an  unconscious 
manner:  when  his  intellectual  and  civilizing  efforts  had 
sufficiently  accumulated  to  form  a  great  generalization 
and  a  new  social  stage  he  rested  for  a  time;  those  were 
epoch-making  instances  which  found  their  visible  ex- 
pression in  a  new  religious  conception:  the  animal-wor- 
ship of  oriental  nations,  the  Law  of  Israel,  the  Humanity 
of  Christ,  etc.  But  where  man  becomes  conscious  of  his 
task,  where  he  recognizes  in  himself  the  absolute  organ- 
izer, there  the  place  of  the  religious  conception  is  taken 
by  the  anti-religious  social-democracy. 

IV.—  I. 

It  is  in  reality  a  priestly  nuisance  to  address  my  com- 
rades from  the  height  of  the  pulpit.  Pulpit,  Christianity 
and  religion  have  often  been  made  to  serve  so  many 
crooked  purposes  that  it  is  very  unpleasant  for  an  up- 
right man  to  come  in  close  touch  with  them.  Yet,  we 
must  approach  them  closely  in  order  to  do  away  with 
those  things  altogether.  If  you  want  to  put  a  brawler 
out  of  the  temple  you  must  first  embrace  him, —  that's 
one  of  the  sensible  contradictions  of  life. 


122  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

It  is  not  an  unusual  phenomenon  in  history  to  see  how 
one  thing  is  being  transformed  into  another  thing  with 
the  name  remaining  the  same.  To  the  inexperienced  the 
changed  new  thing  is  easily  represented  as  the  familiar  old 
one.  Such  is  the  case  with  pulpit,  Christianity  and  re- 
ligion. This  is  a  conservative  trick  which  causes  much 
confusion  in  the  minds  of  the  people.  Even  among  our 
comrades  there  are  some  who  are  thus  caught.  They 
say:  Christ  was  the  first  socialist.  Yet,  Socialism  and 
Christianity  differ  from  each  other  as  the  day  does  from 
the  night.  To  be  sure,  there  are  points  of  resemblance  be- 
tween them.  But  show  me  the  thing  to  which  no  analogy 
could  be  found !  What  does  totally  differ  ?  Day  and  night 
have  this  in  common,  that  they  are  both  portions  of  time. 
The  devil  and  the  archangel  are  both  of  the  same  nature, 
though  one  be  black-  and  the  other  white-skinned,  inas- 
much as  both  of  them  do  claim  some  kind  of  a  skin.  It 
is  the  fundamental  faculty  of  our  mind  to  bring  all  di- 
versity under  one  general  heading.  Though  Christianity 
and  Socialism  may  have  some  points  in  common,  it  is 
none  the  less  true  that  whoever  mistakes  Christ  for  a 
socialist  is  surely  a  dangerous  muddlehead.  In  fact,  our 
knowledge  is  one-sided  when  based  only  on  what  phe- 
nomena have  in  common.  We  must  look  also  for  their 
differentiation.  Not  what  the  Socialist  has  in  common 
with  the  Christian,  but  what  distinguishes  and  differ- 
entiates him  from  the  Christian  shall  be  the  subject  of 
our  consideration. 

Christianity  was  recently  qualified  as  the  religion  of 
servility.  This  seems  to  me  a  very  apt  qualification. 

Indeed,  all  religion  is  servile,  but  Christianity  is  the 
most  servile  of  the  servile.  Let  us  take  the  next  best 
Christian  saying  we  meet  with  on  the  road.  On  my 
way  there  stands  a  cross  with  inscription :  "  Mercy,  gra- 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  123 

cious  Jesus !  Holy  Maria,  pray  for  us."  Here  we  have 
the  inordinate  humility  of  Christianity  in  all  its  wretched- 
ness. For  those  who  build  all  their  hope  on  mercy  are 
wretched  creatures,  indeed.  Those  who  start  out  in  life 
with  the  belief  in  an  Almighty  God,  and  prostrate  them- 
selves before  the  destinies  and  forces  of  nature,  and  in 
their  piteous  feeling  of  impotency  moan  for  mercy,  are 
anything  but  efficient  members  of  modern  society.  When 
we  see  that  modern  Christians  act  differently,  that  they 
brave  the  storm  and  courageously  face  danger,  that  they 
actively  strive  to  remove  calamity,  it  is  only  because  of 
their  defection  from  Christianity.  Though  they  continue 
to  keep  their  name,  their  song-books  and  their  anxieties, 
they  are  in  their  doings  and  dealings  perfect  anti-Christs. 
We  non-religious  social-democrats  must  be  fully  con- 
scious of  this  position.  We  want  to  be  consciously  and 
deliberately,  in  theory  and  practice,  the  energetic  oppo- 
nents of  that  sheepish  and  godly  humility. 

Rooted  in  the  flesh  like  an  old  Adam  is  that  disastrous 
human  disposition  to  perpetuate  a  thing  which  was  only 
meant  to  serve  certain  conditions.  Inertia  and  selfish- 
ness are  joined  together  to  hush  up,  to  deny  or  to  con- 
ciliate the  contradiction  between  Christian  contempt  of 
worldly  life  and  the  joyful,  strenuous  activity  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  present  generation.  Christianity  wants 
resignation,  while  modern  life  wants  us  to  work  with  all 
our  might  for  the  satisfaction  of  our  material  needs. 
Confidence  in  God  is  the  foremost  Christian  virtue,  while 
self-confidence,  the  exact  opposite,  is  necessary  to  achieve 
success.  Those  who  dare  to  put  into  the  mouth  of  Chris- 
tianity the  maxim :  "  Trust  in  God,  but  thou  shalt  not 
hide  thy  talents,"  by  which  they  mean  to  convey  that 
work  was  not  an  un-Christian  thing,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
a  Christian  command,  are  preposterous  sophists.  We,  k 


124  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

in  the  Christian  sense  differs  wholly  from  modern  and 
real  work.  The  Christian  works  for  Heaven,  crucifies 
his  flesh  and  subdues  his  passion.  And  when  he  works 
for  his  daily  bread,  then  it  must  only  be  for  such  an 
unkeep  as  to  prolong  his  tribulations  in  this  valley  of 
tears  in  order  to  be  worthy  of  true  eternal  life.  "  He  that 
loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  and  he  that  hateth  his  life  in 
this  world  shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal  "  (St.  John,  12, 
25).  Heavenly  eternity  is  the  aim  of  the  Christian;  the 
earthly  world  is  the  aim  of  sensible  men. 

Herr  Daniel  Schenkel,  D.D.,  of  Heidelberg,  is  indig- 
nant at  the  assertion  that  the  essence  of  Christianity  is 
the  negation  of  this  world.  "  Is  it  true,"  he  exclaims, 
"  that  Christianity  does  not  regard  this  world  as  a  worthy 
place,  nay,  not  even  as  a  possible  place  for  religion  — 
this  world  of  which  the  Gospel  says :  So  did  God  love 
His  world  that  He  sent  His  only  begotten  Son  unto  it. 
Did  the  primitive  Christians  renounce  the  world? 
Didn't  they  rather  expect  Christ  to  appear  again  on  earth 
and  to  substitute  a  new  order  of  things  for  the  old,  rotten 
one  ? "  Thus  speaks  a  sophistical  reasoner  who  cares 
very  little  for  consistent  reasoning,  but  a  good  deal  for 
a  compromise  between  his  half-hearted  rationalism  and 
the  Christian  religion.  Or  does  he  feel  the  need  of  de- 
luding others,  if  not  himself,  too?  Does  he  not  know 
that  Christianity  has  two  worlds  like  the  Prussians,  one 
that  is  white  and  the  other  black?  The  beautiful  world 
of  reality  the  Christian  has  painted  black.  Its  glories 
are  but  temptations  of  the  devil;  its  labor  a  curse;  its 
love  a  sinful  lust ;  the  flesh  a  weariness  to  the  spirit ;  the 
body  a  wretched  carcass.  As  the  enchanted  prince 
dwells  in  a  wild  beast  so  does  the  white  world  of  Chris- 
tian imagination  live  in  this  black  reality.  To  save  us 
from  this  world  God  has  sent  His  Son,  who  leads  us  into 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  12$ 

the  heavenly  world  of  Christianity.  It  consists  of  spirit- 
ual matter,  which  is  just  as  possible  as  iron  wood-blocks. 
Its  men  and  women  are  sexless ;  its  bodies  have  no  grav- 
ity ;  its  work  is  painless.  To  be  sure,  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians did  have  the  desire  to  renounce  the  world.  They 
expected  the  reappearance  of  Jesus  at  any  moment ;  they 
expected  the  destruction  of  the  world  and  the  crack  of 
doom.  "  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world." 

However,  the  phantastic  salvation  of  Christianity, 
which  aims  at  removing  the  toils  of  the  world,  not  by 
energetic  work,  but  by  believing  and  trusting,  could 
not  possibly  suppress  forever  the  sensible  desire  for  the 
enjoyment  of  material  life.  The  heretics,  reformers, 
Protestants,  old-Catholics,  Unitarians  and  high  critics 
have  all  of  them  contributed  to  the  victory  of  the  black- 
ened and  libelled  truth  over  the  whitewashed  lie  of  re- 
ligious imagination.  Insofar  we  Socialists  are  at  one 
with  the  Progressives.  But  we  protest  against  this  cow- 
ardice in  clinging  to  the  old  name  and  in  trying  to  pass 
off  their  defection  from  faith  for  a  restoration  of  true 
Christianity.  It  is  necessary  to  discredit  the  name  in 
order  to  do  away  with  the  thing  itself. 

The  religion  of  the  Capitalists  is  as  equivocal  and  con- 
tradictory as  their  political  economy,  liberty,  equality  and 
fraternity.  The  farce  of  the  renunciation  of  the  world, 
played  by  the  fat  monk,  is  being  "continued  by  the  well- 
fed  bourgeois.  And  the  most  ludicrous  part  of  it  is  that 
the  Progressive  falls  a  long  way  behind  the  monk,  who 
at  least  was  conscious  of  the  austere  character  of  religion. 
The  lukewarm  and  insipid  Christianity  of  the  modern 
humbugs  claims  to  be  the  only  genuine  article.  The  old 
leaders  of  Christianity,  the  Saints  of  the  Calendar,  man- 
ifested a  real  contempt  for  the  world  and  its  pleasures ; 
they  loved  the  life  of  a  hermit,  wore  the  hair  shirt,  morti- 


126  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

fied  their  body  and  fed  themselves  on  roots  and  herbs. 
Their  life  bore  evidence  of  their  doctrine :  "  God  is  a 
spirit."  Our  modern  crusaders  turn  to  another  page 
where  it  is  written :  "  He  was  made  flesh  and  dwelled 
among  us."  No  doubt,  the  germ  of  equivocation  and 
senseless  contradiction  lay  from  the  beginning  in  the 
Christian  doctrines.  The  apostles  and  church  fathers 
made  sometimes  concessions  to  the  public.  They  taught 
how  to  drive  out  lust  by  marriage,  and  Satan  by  Beelze- 
bub. From  some  passages  it  might  appear  that  praying 
and  fasting  were  the  highest  Christian  duties,  while  from 
other  passages  the  opposite  conclusion  might  be  drawn, 
that  the  Lord  finds  no  pleasure  in  sacrifice.  Christianity, 
not  being  above  nature,  cannot  dispense  with  the  joy  of 
life  altogether,  and  must  end  by  compromising  and  trim- 
ming. The  clear-sighted  social-democrat  will  not  be  de- 
tained by  the  trees  from  recognizing  the  forest.  The 
essence  of  Christianity  is  abstemiousness  in  this  world 
and  sweet  peas  in  Heaven. 

A  doctrine  which  swayed  nations  and  continents  for 
centuries  has  surely  its  historic  significance.  But  this 
granted,  we  must  reject  its  claim  to  eternal  domination. 
The  good  which  Christianity  contains,  as,  for  instance, 
mortifying  the  flesh  as  a  means  against  non-married  lust, 
or  brotherhood  of  man  against  national  jealousies,  is 
readily  accepted  by  social-democracy.  We  condemn  all 
jingoism  which,  however,  the  Christian  church  as  a  rule 
fosters.  Yet  we  cannot  regard  that  truth  as  divine  and 
holy. 

With  that  difference  between  religious  and  secular 
truth  we  arrive  at  the  point  which  essentially  distin- 
guishes the  Socialist  from  the  Christian.  To  its  elucida- 
tion I  should  like  to  ask  you,  my  friends,  to  give  me  your 
special  attention  for  a  while. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  I2/ 

Truth  is  truth,  undoubtedly !  But  in  its  religious  form 
it  is  one-sided,  insensate  and  intolerant.  Take  for  in- 
stance the  principle  of  brotherhood  of  man.  It  is  an 
eternal  truth,  i.  e.,  it  is  a  human  need  that  men  shall  live 
together.  Sociability  is  in  their  nature,  they  must  love 
one  another;  and  where  they  fail  to  recognize  it  they 
suffer  in  their  own  well-being  and  happiness.  Where, 
however,  the  religious  believer  has  taken  up  that  prin- 
ciple, where  the  Christian  commands :  Love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself,  there  he  goes  at  it  with  such  a  fierceness  that 
he  knocks  all  rime  and  reason  out  of  it.  When  he  be 
smitten  on  the  right  cheek  he  is  to  offer  the  left  one,  too. 
When  he  preaches  love  he  excludes  hatred.  On  the  other 
hand,  Socialism  does  not  only  preach  love  of  humanity, 
but  is  based  on  it.  The  anti-religious,  reasonable  love  of 
humanity  knows  how  to  limit  itself;  it  does  not  over- 
shoot the  mark  or  exclude  its  antithesis :  the  hatred,  but 
includes  it  as  a  holy  because  necessary  means  for  tem- 
porary use.  We,  too,  desire  to  love  the  enemy  and  to  do 
good  to  him  who  hates  us  —  but  not  ere  we  have  effected 
his  unconditional  surrender.  Meanwhile  we  sing  with 
Herwegh : 

Die  Liebe  kann  erlosen  nicht, 

Die  Liebe  nicht  erretten, 
Halt  du,  O  Hass,  dein  jungst  Gericht, 

Brich  du,  O  Hass,  die  Ketten. 

Bis  unsre  Hand  in  Asche  stiebt, 
Soil  sie  vom  Schwert  nicht  lassen, 

Wir  haben  lang  genug  geliebt 
Und  wollen  endlich  hassen. 

(Love  cannot  save,  Love  cannot  redeem, 
Arise  thou,  O  Hate,  and  break  our  chains. 
Until  our  hand  withers  we  shall  not  relinquish  the  sword, 
We've  loved  long  enough,  let  us  now  hate.) 


128  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

IV.— 2. 

The  question  we  are  dealing  with  concerns  the  differ- 
ence between  religious  and  profane  truth.  That  the  Jew 
shall  not  run  about  unwashed,  Moses  prescribed  cleanli- 
ness as  a  law.  Cleanliness  is  a  necessary  requirement; 
it  is  a  truism.  In  its  religious  form  however  it  is  jof  a 
solemn  immobility,  fixed  to  time,  place  and  number ;  it 
prescribes  when,  in  what  manner  and  how  often  one  must 
wash.  The  religious  truth  is  a  binding  prescription; 
secular  science  and  the  free  use  of  water  cleanses  more 
thoroughly  than  that  prescription.  In  science  the  atom 
is  as  worthy  an  object  as  the  starry  sky.  There  is  no 
fixed  gulf  in  science  between  worthy  and  unworthy  ob- 
jects, and  none  in  scientific  ethics  between  good  and 
evil.  All  things  and  qualities  are  useful  and  suitable; 
clean  and  unclean,  love  and  hate,  enjoyment  and  renun- 
ciation—  all  is  relative,  more  or  less,  according  to  time 
and  conditions.  Scientific  freedom,  subordinating  all 
things  and  qualities  to  human  ends,  is  thoroughly  anti- 
religious.  Religious  truth  consists  just  in  this,  that  it 
lifts  natural  qualities  above  nature,  that  it  separates  them 
from  the  living  stream  of  human  progress  and  confines 
them  in  a  stagnant  pool. 

In  qualifying  the  common  and  profane  truth  as  "  scien- 
tific," I  should  like  to  remind  you,  friends  and  comrades, 
that  the  scientific  truth  is  called  profane  and  common. 
It  is  necessary  to  bear  that  in  mind,  seeing  that  a  scien- 
tific priesthood  has  arisen  which  is  aiding  and  abetting 
religious  priestcraft.  To  destroy  palpable  superstition 
would  be  an  easy  matter  if  dualistic  confusion  were  not 
on  the  lookout  for  the  gaps  of  science  in  order  to  lay 
there  its  eggs.  Such  gaps  are  to  be  found  especially  in 
the  field  concerning  epistemology,  the  theory  of  the 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  I2Q 

method  of  cognition.  As  the  Laplander  or  Firelander  is 
terrorized  by  mighty  natural  phenomena,  so  is  the  pro- 
fessor by  the  wondrous  working  of  the  human  mind. 
Enlightened  freethinkers,  who  easily  dispense  with  Chris- 
tianity and  religion  in  general,  are  still  caught  in  the 
snares  and  pitfalls  of  superstition  as  long  as  they  don't 
clearly  distinguish  between  religious  and  profane  truth, 
and  as  long  as  they  are  not  clear  about  the  organ  of 
truth  or  the  faculty  of  knowledge.  Having  materialized 
everything  spiritual,  there  remained  nothing  for  the  pro- 
fessors but  to  spiritualize  their  own  profession,  science. 
They  assume  academic  knowledge  to  be  of  a  different 
stuff  from,  say,  the  knowledge  of  the  peasant,  of  the 
dyer  or  of  the  smith.  Scientific  agriculture  is,  however, 
only  insofar  ahead  of  usual  farming  that  its  rules  or  its 
knowledge  of  the  so-called  natural  laws  are  generaliza- 
tions of  a  more  comprehensive  kind.  They  but  differ 
from  each  other  in  degree  and  not  in  essence,  as  for  in- 
stance a  quart  of  legumes  from  a  quart  of  peas.  There 
must  be  no  groping  in  the  dark  about  the  insipid  differ- 
ence between  noble  science  and  common  understanding,  if 
we  want  to  overcome  the  claims  of  the  aristocracy  of  in- 
tellect. Our  opponents  may  indignantly  protest  against 
such  crude  notions  of  the  democratic  levellers  who  even 
refuse  to  recognize  intellectual  distinction.  Yet,  quite 
as  the  old  struggle  against  aristocracy  was  not  meant  to 
disparage  their  glorious  ancestors,  so  our  shafts  are  not 
directed  against  the  intellect  of  the  intellectuals.  We 
object  only  to  the  material  privileges  which  the  knightly 
highwaymen  and  academic  scribblers  lay  claim  to. 
Since  it  is  no  more  possible  to  brutally  coerce  the  people 
to  the  production  of  wealth,  the  learned  satellites  of  our 
rulers  cheat  them  with  the  miracles  of  intellectual  labor. 
The  distinguished  and  lucrative  position  of  the  professor 


130  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

as  well  as  the  profits  of  the  employer  are  defended  under 
the  false  pretences  that  intellectual  labor  stands  far 
higher  and  is  ten  times  more  productive  than  manual 
labor.  Because  we  social-democrats  are  treating  such 
presumptions  with  contempt,  we  are  nicknamed  "  blas- 
phemers of  art  and  science."  We  have  the  deepest  con- 
tempt for  the  stilted  phraseology  of  "  culture  and  sci- 
ence "  and  for  the  talk  of  the  graduated  flunkeys  who, 
like  the  pagan  priests  with  their  rudimentary  knowledge 
of  nature,  use  their  sham  idealism  to  keep  the  people  in 
ignorance.  The  modern  dualistic  belief  in  the  world  of 
a  scientific  and  of  an  ethical  spirit,  which  is  supposed  to 
be  superior  to  the  common  world  and  is  therefore  to 
control  it,  is  nothing  more  than  the  rehashed  superstition 
of  an  earthly  and  heavenly  life.  Professors  who  need 
the  support  of  religion  transform  the  Kingdom  of  God 
to  a  kingdom  of  scientific  spirit.  As  Lord  God  finds  his 
antipode  in  the  devil  so  has  the  pious  professor  his  antag- 
onist in  the  materialist. 

The  materialistic  conception  of  the  world  is  just  as  old 
as  the  religious  disbelief.  And  both  have  been  worked 
up  in  the  nineteenth  century  from  their  crude  form  to 
scientific  precision.  But  our  learned  academicians  fail 
to  understand  that,  because  they  feel  their  social  position 
endangered  by  the  democratic  tendencies  inherent  in  ma- 
terialism. Feuerbach  says :  "  It  is  the  characteristic  fea- 
ture of  a  professor  of  philosophy  not  to  be  a  philosopher, 
and  conversely,  it  is  the  characteristic  feature  of  a  philos- 
opher not  to  be  a  professor  of  philosophy."  To-day  we 
are  a  step  farther.  Not  only  philosophy  but  science  in 
general  has  left  its  official  mouthpieces  behind.  Even 
where  there  are  materialistic  professors  in  the  profes- 
sional chair,  there  adheres  to  them  some  unscientific  re- 
ligious nuisance  in  the  form  of  an  idealistic  remnant  as 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  13! 

pieces  of  egg-shell  to  the  unfledged  bird.  Furthermore, 
one  swallow  makes  no  summer,  and  the  really  scientific 
conception  of  a  professor  cannot  take  off  the  blot  which 
sullies  his  whole  class.  As  long  as  the  middle  classes 
and  their  leaders  had  to  fulfill  a  civilizing  mission,  their  *"" 
academies  were  nurseries  of  learning.  Since  then,  how- 
ever, history  has  moved  forward,  and  the  struggle  for  a 
higher  civilization  has  been  devolved  on  the  working 
class,  the  nethermost  stratum  of  human  society.  Despite 
this  historic  change  the  old  decaying  rulers  are  making 
great  efforts  to  preserve  their  power  and  are  looking  to 
the  academic  dignitaries  for  support,  thus  turning  the 
"  free  scientists  "  into  well-paid  attorneys  to  defend  a 
dying  cause. 

The  socialist  demand  for  a  more  equitable  and  popular 
distribution  of  economic  goods  can  be  realized  by  a  de- 
mocracy only,  by  a  government  of  the  people  who  do  not 
tolerate  the  rule  of  a  clique  which,  under  the  pretence  of 
intellectual  superiority,  seeks  to  appropriate  the  lion's 
share  of  the  social  wealth.  In  order  to  keep  that  pre- 
sumptuous selfishness  within  reasonable  bounds  it  is  nec- 
essary to  understand  clearly  the  relation  between  mind 
and  matter.  Philosophy  is  therefore  a  subject  which 
closely  concerns  the  working  class.  This,  of  course,  does 
by  no  means  imply  that  every  working  man  should  try  to 
become  acquainted  with  philosophy  and  study  the  relation 
between  idea  and  matter.  From  the  fact  that  we  all  eat 
bread  does  not  follow  that  we  must  understand  milling 
and  baking.  But  just  as  we  need  millers  and  bakers  so 
does  the  working  class  stand  in  need  of  keen  scholars 
who  can  follow  up  the  tortuous  ways  of  the  false  priests 
and  lay  bare  the  inanity  of  their  tricks.  Manual  laborers 
do  not  sufficiently  appreciate  the  real  value  of  mental 
labor.  Their  healthy  distrust  against  the  leading  scrib- 


132  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

biers  of  bourgeois  society  leads  them  too  far.  They  see 
how  much  wrong-doing  is  going  on  under  the  cloak  of 
intellectual  work  and  are  therefore  inclined  to  undervalue 
mental  labor  and  to  overestimate  manual  labor.  This 
brutal  materialism  must  be  counteracted.  Physical 
vigor,  bodily  superiority  was  always  the  prerogative  of 
the  working  classes.  But  in  default  of  mental  training 
they  have  so  far  been  outwitted.  The  emancipation  of 
the  working  classes  requires  that  they  should  lay  hold  on 
the  science  of  the  century.  The  mere  sentiment  of  indig- 
nation against  the  unjust  conditions  under  which  we 
suffer  does  not  meet  the  case  of  freeing  the  working 
class,  superior  in  numbers  and  physique  as  they  may  be. 
They  must  have  recourse  to  the  armory  of  intellect.  Of 
all  its  weapons  the  theory  of  cognition  or  the  theory  of 
science,  that  is,  the  understanding  of  the  scientific  method 
of  thinking,  is  the  universal  weapon  against  religious  be- 
lief, driving  it  out  of  its  last  hidden  recess. 

The  belief  in  Gods  and  demi-Gods,  in  Moses  and  the 
Prophets,  the  belief  in  the  Pope,  in  the  Bible,  in  the 
Kaiser,  in  his  Bismarck  and  his  government,  in  short,  all 
belief  in  authorities,  finds  its  definite  and  final  reply  in 
the  science  of  mind.  As  long  as  we  have  not  discovered 
how  and  where  wisdom  arises  we  are  easily  exposed  to 
the  danger  of  being  bamboozled.  The  clear  knowledge 
of  how  thoughts  are  being  produced  puts  us  on  a  coign 
of  vantage  which  makes  us  independent  of  God,  books 
and  men.  In  dissolving  the  dualism  of  mind  and  matter, 
the  theory  of  the  scientific  method  of  thinking  destroys 
the  last  pillar  which  supports  a  society  divided  into  rulers 
and  ruled,  into  oppressors  and  oppressed. 

I  don't  think  here  is  the  proper  place  to  enter  more 
fully  into  the  discussion  of  the  theory  of  mind.  I  shall 
confine  myself  to  the  statement  of  some  of  its  most  evi- 


THE  RELIGION  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  133 

dent  and  irrefutable  propositions,  in  order  to  be  able  to 
oppose  the  presumption  of  the  ruling  classes  which,  by 
pleading  intellectual  work,  endeavor  to  extenuate  the 
charge  of  their  exploitation  of  the  people.  The  socialist 
attack  on  their  economic,  or  class,  position  fills  them  with 
fanatic  fury.  They  are  therefore  unable  to  bring  the  nec- 
essary impartiality  to  bear  upon  the  study  of  subjects 
which  may  produce  social  changes.  Mental  and  social 
science  can  hardly  meet  with  the  sympathy  of  an  audi- 
ence which,  through  their  privileged  and  propertied  posi- 
tion, are  interested  in  clogging  the  wheel  of  civilization. 
Such  a  science  appeals  all  the  more  to  the  judicious  atti- 
tude of  the  have-nots,  of  the  disinherited  and  oppressed. 
Ad  rem!  Spirit  is  neither  a  ghost  nor  the  breath  of 
God.  Idealists  and  materialists  agree  that  spirit  belongs 
to  the  category  of  "  worldly  things,"  dwells  in  human 
brains,  and  is  nothing  else  than  an  abstract  expression, 
a  collective  noun  expressive  of  thoughts  which  exist 
simultaneously  and  follow  each  other  in  organic  order. 
If  spirit  is  understood  to  be  no  more  than  another  word 
for  our  force  of  thinking,  who  could  then  deny  the  some- 
what paradoxical,  yet  empirical,  proposition  that  mental 
work  is  a  bodily  effort?  With  this  I  venture  to  intro- 
duce you  to  the  rather  difficult  chapter  of  contradictions. 
As  line  and  point  are  but  mathematical  conceptions,  so 
are  contradictions  no  real  things,  but  logical  niceties,  and 
have  only  a  relative  and  comparative  value.  Relatively 
the  great  is  small  and  the  small  great.  In  this  sense  we 
may  say  matter  and  mind,  like  all  opposites,  are  logically 
but  not  really  in  opposition  to  each  other,  since  all  oppo- 
sites are  such  only  in  way  of  comparison.  Our  body  is 
so  closely  connected  with  our  spirit,  that  physical  labor 
is  absolutely  impossible  without  spiritual  collaboration. 
Even  the  simplest  work  of  an  unskilled  laborer  requires 


134  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

the  co-operation  of  mind.  Conversely,  the  belief  in 
metaphysics  or  in  disembodied  spiritual  labor  is  an  ab- 
surdity. Even  the  purest  mental  exercise  is  undoubtedly 
an  effort  of  the  body.  All  human  work  is  both  mental 
and  physical.  From  my  preceding  lectures  at  least  as 
much  is  evident,  that  thoughts  not  only  originate  from 
the  brains  and  therefore  proceed  subjectively  from  mat- 
ter, but  that  they  always  and  everywhere  have  some 
palpable  thing  as  their  object.  Cerebral  matter  is  the 
subject  of  thought,  the  infinite  material  of  the  world  is 
its  object. 

The  mind  as  well  as  the  body  is  eager  to  produce,  to 
bring  forth  fruit.  Therefore  intellectual  work  must  be- 
come materialized  and  bodily  work  spiritualized.  An 
analysis  of  the  product  of  labor  will  never  indicate  how 
much  the  mind  has  contributed  to  it  and  how  much  the 
body,  for  they  operate  together  in  close  companionship, 
and  not  in  isolation  from  each  other.  A  certain  work 
may  be  characterized,  either  as  mental  or  physical,  the 
product  however,  is  made  both  by  mind  and  body.  Their 
contribution  to  the  whole  cannot  be  separated.  Who 
could  indicate  in  a  kitchen-garden  what  parts  of  the 
plants  are  due  to  the  spade,  the  arm  of  the  gardener,  the 
soil,  the  rain  and  the  manure?  It  has  always  seemed 
to  me  an  idle  and  poor  endeavor  to  divide  up  the  products 
of  labor  according  to  the  factors  which  contributed  to 
them.  It  is  a  perverse  bourgeois  idea  which  cannot  be 
consummated  and  leads,  moreover,  in  practice  to  just 
the  opposite  result.  This  idea  appears  to  be  the  out- 
come of  that  cardinal  perversion  which  wants  to  turn 
man  into  an  independent  producer  who,  freed  from  all 
social  trammels,  should  compete  with  his  fellow  individ- 
uals and  thus  realize  the  phantastic  ideals  of  personal 
liberty.  But  you,  my  friends,  know  full  well,  that  all 


THE   RELIGION    OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  135 

work  in  the  capitalist  world  is  in  reality  performed  in 
common.  The  intellect  of  the  journalist  works  for  the 
manufacturers,  and  the  manufacturers  produce  linen  for 
the  journalists,  police  agents,  shoe-polishers,  etc.  One 
for  all.  Nobody  looks  for  his  ultimate  object  in  his 
own  product,  everybody  aims  at  the  products  of  all  which 
are  supplied  by  the  world's  market  and  find  their  reali- 
zation in  the  form  of  money.  If  we  judge  the  perform- 
ance of  each  member  of  our  society  according  to  the 
money  he  receives,  then  the  stockholders  must  have  con- 
tributed an  enormous  amount  of  social  labor. 

The  work  of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  family, 
the  work  of  the  factory  and  that  of  the  whole  society, 
is  an  organism,  each  part  of  which  contributes  to  the 
whole.  The  contribution  of  each  organ  cannot  be  me- 
chanically weighed  or  measured.  The  Socialist  is  quite 
aware  that  the  workers  are  organs  of  the  work  process. 
He  has  completely  given  up  the  insipid  idea  of  individ- 
ualizing and  dividing  up  a  communistic  product,  and 
paying  to  each  according  to  his  deserts.  Present  society, 
with  its  misunderstood  principle  of  suum  cuique  (each 
unto  his  own)  and  its  grotesque  justice,  acts  as  unreason- 
ably as  the  man  who  gives  his  eye  an  overweening  care 
while  utterly  neglecting  his  leg.  As  the  engineer  is 
more  careful  about  his  smallest  screws  than  about  his  big 
wheel,  so  do  we  desire  that  the  product  of  social  labor 
shall  be  divided  according  to  the  social  needs,  so  that  the 
strong  and  the  weak,  the  swift  and  the  clumsy,  the 
mental  and  the  physical  labor,  insofar  as  they  are  hu- 
man, shall  work  and  enjoy  in  human  community. 

That   object,   my   comrades,    is    opposed   by   religion. 

And  not  only  by  the  formal,  the  common  religion  of 
priestcraft,  but  also  by  the  most  purified  and  sub- 
lime professional  religion  of  hazy  idealists.  Since  the 


136  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

publication  of  the  first  part  of  my  sermon,  I  have  been 
taken  to  task  by  several  people  that  I  was  carried  away 
too  far  by  my  criticism.  Our  friend  Schafer  of  Franc- 
fort  thinks  that  I  was  condemning  Jesus  for  the  mis- 
understanding of  his  followers.  They  had  made  of  His 
teachings  what  the  Master  had  never  intended ;  we  should 
therefore  discriminate  between  the  ideal  true  Christianity 
and  the  degenerated  one.  My  criticism  against  the  in- 
ordinate Christian  humility  was  not  well-founded,  for  the 
Lord  Himself  was  courageous  enough  to  chase  the 
money-lenders  out  of  the  temple. 

To  that  I  should  like  to  reply:  Christianity  aims  at 
the  divine  control  of  the  world.  What  a  vain  endeavor ! 
Christianity  itself  is  being  controlled  against  its  will  and 
desire  by  the  nature  of  things.  "  Therefore  it  is  so  full 
of  compromises,"  therefore  the  apostle,  with  all  his  de- 
sire for  celibacy,  must  allow  marriage,  and  therefore 
Christian  non-resistance,  which  commands  to  tender  the 
left  cheek  when  the  right  one  was  smitten,  is  swept 
away  by  the  indignation  of  the  smitten.  But,  you  see, 
it  is  not  the  consistency,  it  is,  indeed,  the  inconsistency 
of  Christianity,  for  it  lays  special  stress  on  the  neces- 
sity of  absolute  resignation,  on  the  patience  of  the  lamb 
carried  to  the  shambles.  Such  humility  has  surely  its 
limits,  but  that  a  revolutionary  upheaval  was  a  part  of 
the  divine  mission  is  beyond  doubt  quite  foreign  to  the 
spirit  of  Christianity,  though  we  might  find  here  and 
there  an  insignificant  instance  from  which  the  contrary 
might  be  inferred.  Whether  Christ  really  meant  or 
wanted  such  a  humbleness,  I  cannot  say.  After  all,  why 
should  such  a  question  have  any  interest  for  us?  Pro- 
fane and  true  truth  is  not  based  upon  personalities.  It 
is  based  on  external  objects;  it  is  objective.  It  does  not 
lay  claim  to  validity  because  it  originates  from  a  great 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  137 

master.  The  utmost  we  can  say  is  that  the  master  took 
hold  of  it  because  it  was  valid.  And  just  in  this  lies 
the  mistake  and  the  superstition,  of  which  our  friend 
Schafer  is  guilty  and  which  makes  me  indignantly  knock 
at  the  pulpit  that  people  are  full  of  hero-worship  and 
cannot  give  up  their  belief  in  authority  and  their  idolatry 
of  the  great  spirit.  , 

Great  men,  who  carry  forward  the  beacon  of  knowl- 
edge, surely  deserve  all  honor,  but  only  insofar  and  as 
long  as  their  teaching  is  founded  on  realities. 

V. 

Love  for  the  preceptorial  office  and  for  the  promi- 
nence of  the  pulpit  as  well  as  the  approval  of  a  friendly 
and  indulgent  audience  induce  me  to  continue  my  ser- 
mons. It  is,  however,  but  fair  to  mention  that  there  are 
a  good  many  among  you  who  blame  me  for  being  too 
"  scholarly  "  or  not  "  popular  "  enough.  To  that  I  re- 
ply that  only  trite  sayings  and  truisms  are  easily  com- 
prehensible. The  so-called  popular  things  always  move 
in  the  old  ruts,  while  social-democracy  has  a  new  doc- 
trine, based  on  principles  which  are  generally  misunder- 
stood and  require  a  total  transformation  of  our  mode  of 
thinking,  and  therefore  cannot  be  comprehended  without 
a  certain  mental  effort. 

Religion,  my  comrades,  is  primitive  philosophy.  On 
the  other  hand,  Social-democracy  is  a  still  growing 
product  of  the  whole  historic  past.  We  are,  therefore, 
justified  in  substituting  historically  developed,  worldly, 
Science  for  Religion  and  do  not  deviate  from  our  subject 
by  dwelling  on  worldly,  non-religious,  matter  in  these 
hours  of  devotion.  I  called  religion  philosophy  because 
it  claims  not  only  to  redeem  us,  with  the  help  of  Gods, 


138  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

and  by  praying  and  whining,  from  the  earthly  miseries, 
but  also  to  lend  a  systematic  frame  to  our  thinking. 
The  universal  significance  of  religion  for  uncultured 
tribes  is  founded  on  the  universal  need  for  a  systematic 
knowledge  of  the  world.  Just  as  we  generally  have  a 
practical  need  for  the  dominion  over  the  things  of  the 
world,  so  do  we  generally  have  a  theoretical  need  for 
a  systematic  view  of  life.  We  require  to  see  the  begin- 
ning and  the  end  of  everything.  The  insipid  clamor 
about  the  universality,  eternity  and  inevitability  of  relig- 
ion is  not  without  some  justification.  To  flatly  deny  it 
would  be  Russian  nihilism  which  was  justly  expelled  from 
the  "  International."  l  We  are  far  from  senseless  nega- 
tion. We  scorn  the  "  Kulturkampfer,"  in  order  to  fight 
for  real  culture.  We  acknowledge  that  the  need  for  a 
systematic  view  of  the  world  is  inherent  in  man  who 
always  requires  a  canon  for  his  thoughts  and  deeds. 
The  things  which  engage  his  attention,  as  for  instance 
mind  and  body,  the  transient  and  the  lasting,  time  and 
eternity,  reality  and  appearance,  ethics,  state  and  society, 
he  wants  to  see  in  a  certain  order  and  logical  sequence. 
Man  requires  to  have  a  reasonable  connection  of  his 
ideas,  so  that  he  may  bring  a  reasonable  system  into 
practical  life.  We,  too,  we  social-democrats  and  defend- 
ers of  revolutionary  movements,  feel  the  same  want. 
Servile  trimmers  and  bunglers  may  perhaps  on  that 
ground  think  us  religious.  We  reject  that  qualification. 
Not  because  we  refuse  to  admit  that  religious  and  so- 
cial-democratic philosophy  have  something  in  common, 
but  because  we  want  to  emphasize  the  difference  be- 
tween them  and  to  break  away  not  only  internally,  but 

1  An   allusion   to   the  expulsion    of    Bakounin   from    the  "  International " 
in   1872. —  EDITOR. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  139 

externally  also,  in  name  and  deed,  in  short  completely 
from  everything  which  smacks  of  priestcraft. 

Yet,  it  is  not  sufficient  to  dethrone  the  phantastic  and 
religious  system  of  life;  it  is  necessary  to  put  a  new 
system,  a  rational  one,  in  its  stead.  And  that,  my 
friends,  only  the  socialists  can  accomplish.  Or,  if  the 
doctors  of  philosophy  think  this  language  too  presump- 
tuous, I  will  put  it  differently,  though  the  meaning  re- 
mains the  same:  our  social-democracy  is  the  necessary 
outcome  of  a  non-religious  and  sober  way  of  thinking. 
It  is  the  outcome  of  philosophic  science.  Philosophers 
wrestled  with  the  priests  in  order  to  replace  a  non-civ- 
ilized mode  of  thinking  by  a  civilized  one,  to  replace 
faith  by  science.  The  object  is  achieved,  the  victory  is 
won.  Cannibal  religion  of  primitive  ages  was  softened 
by  Christianity,  philosophy  continued  in  its  civilizing 
mission,  and  after  many  untenable  and  transient  sys- 
tems produced  the  imperishable  system  of  science,  the 
system  of  democratic  (dialectic)  materialism. 

The  Prussian  professor  Treitschke  thinks  the  self- 
confidence  of  social-democracy  to  be  a  clever  trick  used 
with  the  purpose  of  imposing  upon  the  people.  Of 
course,  he  looks  for  us  behind  that  hedge  where  he  is 
sheltering  himself.  The  professional  sycophants,  the 
prostitutes  of  the  pen,  having  long  ago  sold  their  honor, 
are  quite  unable  to  grasp  either  the  convincing  power 
of  truth  or  the  self-confidence  inspired  by  a  consistent 
and  systematic  view  of  the  world.  The  socialist  phil- 
osophy, with  which  we  are  dealing,  is  a  closely  serried 
and  well-knit  system.  A  thorough  treatment  of  it  could 
only  be  carried  out  from  a  professional  chair  specially 
appointed  for  that  purpose.  My  task  is  a  different  one. 
In  the  first  place  I  want  to  interest  you  in  the  new  phil- 
osophy and  to  stimulate  you  to  further  investigation  and 


I4O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

thinking  for  yourselves.  I  am  to-day  more  of  a 
raconteur  who  does  not  begin  with  the  beginning  nor 
finish  with  the  end,  but  by  a  rambling  method  wants 
to  excite  the  curiosity  of  his  audience.  I  am  giving  you 
the  outlines  and  the  salient  points  only,  which  you 
should  fill  up  and  further  develop  by  your  own  work. 

We  call  ourselves  materialists.  Just  as  religion  is  a 
generic  term  for  various  beliefs,  so  is  materialism  a 
general  name  for  various  scientific  conceptions.  Re- 
viewing the  world  from  the  lofty  standpoint  of  the  re- 
ligious heaven,  everything  —  even  the  purest  ether  — 
appears  to  be  common  matter,  dirt  and  clay.  All  phil- 
osophy, even  idealist  Platonism,  all  scientific  investiga- 
tion, all  positive  knowledge  is  in  the  distorted  eyes  of 
religion  no  more  than  material  aspiration.  Indeed,  all 
philosophers  are  materialists  in  disguise,  for  all  of  them 
want  real  knowledge,  knowledge  of  real  truth.  Mater- 
ialists in  the  contemptible  sense  of  the  word,  who  find 
the  whole  object  of  life  in  eating,  drinking  and  in  the 
satisfaction  of  physical  wants  —  simple  philistines  have 
no  room  in  science,  they  form  no  particular  school  and 
do  no  theorizing  whatever.  Philosophic  materialists,  on 
the  other  hand,  are  those  thinkers  who  put  the  real  world 
at  the  beginning,  at  the  head  of  their  investigation,  and 
the  idea  or  spirit  as  the  sequel  and  outcome,  as  the 
product,  while  their  opponents  follow  the  opposite 
method :  they  decree,  after  the  religious  method,  the  rise 
of  reality  from  the  logos  (God  spake  and  it  was),  the 
material  world  from  the  idea.  No  doubt,  materialism 
suffered  heretofore  from  the  lack  of  sound  logical  evi- 
dence. But  now  we  social-democrats  accept  the  name, 
with  which  our  opponents  think  to  abuse  us,  because 
we  know  that  "  the  stone  which  the  builders  refused  is 
become  the  head  stone  of  the  corner."  We  would  be 


•    THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  14! 

equally  justified  to  call  ourselves  idealists,  inasmuch  as 
our  system  is  based  on  the  final  results  of  philosophy,  on 
the  scientific  investigation  of  ideas,  on  the  clear  insight 
won  into  the  nature  of  mind.  How  little  our  opponents 
are  capable  of  understanding  us  is  shown  by  the  con- 
tradictory names  given  us.  One  time  we  are  called 
crude  materialists  whose  only  desire  is  to  lay  hold  of 
the  wealth  of  the  rich,  and  another  time,  when  dealing 
with  our  communistic  ideals,  we  are  called  inveterate 
idealists.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  are  both  materialists 
and  idealists  at  the  same  time.  Palpable,  true  reality  is 
our  ideal,  the  ideal  of  social-democracy  is  material. 

The  "  Alphabet  of  Knowledge  for  the  Thinking,"  pub- 
lished lately  in  the  Volksstaat,  designated  the  inductive 
method  as  the  "  impregnable  basis  of  all  science,  which 
builds  on  facts."  The  application  of  this  method  to  all 
problems  of  the  world,  that  is  the  systematic  applica- 
tion of  induction  shapes  the  socialist  conception  of  the 
world  into  a  system.  Its  categorical  imperative  is  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Thou  shalt  not  begin  to  speculate  without  ma- 
terial ;  thou  shalt  base  thy  deductions,  rules  and  axioms 
on  facts  only,  on  palpable  realities.  Thinking  must  be- 
gin with  data."  We  begin  to  speculate,  but  we  don't 
speculate  about  the  beginning.  We  know  once  for  all, 
that  all  thinking  must  begin  with  some  fragment  of  a 
real  phenomenon,  with  a  given  beginning;  the  inquiry 
into  the  beginning  of  the  beginning  is  therefore  a  non- 
sense, contradictory  to  the  general  law  of  logic.  Those 
who  speak  of  the  beginning  of  the  world  imply  that 
time  was  antecedent  to  the  world.  "  Nothing  was  "  are 
two  words  which  preclude  each  other.  That  something 
was  which  was  not,  can  only  be  asserted  by  a  shrewd  idiot 
who  draws  square  circles.  Nothing  can  only  mean :  not 
this  nor  that.  Our  philosophic  system  begins  with  the 


142  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

knowledge  that  beginning  and  end  are,  if  I  may  say  so, 
subjective  modes,  or  categories,  of  the  human  mind. 

And  as  logical  as  the  beginning  is  our  sequence.  The 
whole  metaphysics,  which  Kant  sums  up  as  the  question 
after  God,  free  will  and  immortality,  finds  its  final 
solution  in  our  system,  through  our  knowledge  that  un- 
derstanding and  reason  is  an  absolutely  inductive  fac- 
ulty. That  is,  our  comprehension  of  the  world  is  perfect 
when  we  arrange  and  divide  the  empirical  things  accord- 
ing to  their  general  qualities  in  species,  classes,  concep- 
tions, etc.  This  is  quite  a  truism  which  would  hardly 
be  worth  discussing  but  for  the  superstitious  and  ideolo- 
gues who  are  never  tired  of  jabbering  about  deduction. 
They  assert  that  our  intellect  possesses  still  a  second 
method  in  ascertaining  the  truth,  though  simple,  pal- 
pable truth  is  inductive.  But  they  claim  that  in  math- 
ematics for  instance,  the  deductive  method  is  supreme 
and  independent  of  experience.  Knowing  that  two  and 
two  equals  four  we  also  KNOW  that  the  same  result 
would  be  obtained  in  heaven  and  on  earth  and  always 
and  everywhere.  Insofar  we  also  know  of  times  and 
dimensions  which  no  human  eye  ever  perceived  and  no 
human  ear  ever  heard.  That  a  camel  has  two  humps 
was  a  simple  experience,  but  that  two  and  two  equal 
four,  or  that  the  part  is  smaller  than  the  whole  is  claimed 
to  be  a  transcendental,  metaphysical  truth,  a  deduction 
from  pure  reason.  They  believe,  so  to  speak,  in  an  inner 
light  which  revealed  them  the  mysteries  of  mathematics, 
ethics,  the  existence  of  God,  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
freedom  of  will  and  other  transcendental  moonshine. 
Thanks  to  the  idealistic  studies  of  a  Descartes,  Spinoza, 
Leibnitz,  Kant,  Fichte,  Hegel  we  were  able  to  advance  to 
our  materialistic  philosophy,  to  reveal  the  deductive 
ghost  of  the  transcendentalists.  The  celebrities  of  phil- 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  143 

osophy  have  one  after  another  so  far  promoted  and 
strengthened  the  cause  of  truth  that  we  social-democrats, 
standing-  on  their  shoulders,  are  able  to  understand  com- 
pletely the  mechanical  nature  of  all  knowledge  of  the 
religions,  the  speculative  as  well  as  the  mathematical. 
It  may  sound  strange  that  that  knowledge  is  due  to  our 
party  standpoint,  considering  that  a  scientific  result  is  a 
human  affair.  Yet,  our  assertion  is,  easily  comprehen- 
sible, for  social-democracy  does  not  represent  a  party,  but 
humanity.  The  party  of  the  disinherited  is  the  party  of 
the  disinterested,  is  the  party  of  impartial  truth.  We 
social-democrats  have  the  easiest  access  to  philosophy, 
for  our  mind  is  not  dimmed  by  narrow  selfishness. 

The  transcendental  certainty,  the  deduction  which  is  to 
be  found  in  the  proposition  that  two  and  two  equal 
four,  is,  like  any  other  deduction,  a  mere  subterfuge; 
four  and  two  times  two  are  but  different  terms  for  one 
and  the  same  thing.  Everything  has  a  certain  sub- 
stance. Smaller  parts  form  the  substance  of  the  whole ; 
handle  and  blade  form  the  substance  of  a  knife;  two 
mountains  have  a  dale  between,  and  in  the  number  four 
is  contained  two  times  two.  Thus,  because  the  sub- 
stance is  quite  mechanically  given  in  a  thing,  we  are 
apodictically  certain  and  transcendentally  convinced  that 
two  times  two  equal  four,  the  part  is  smaller  than  the 
whole,  the  knife  is  not  without  a  handle  and  a  blade, 
and  two  mountains  are  not  without  a  valley.  Where 
only  the  wet  is  called  water,  there  we  don't  need  any 
special  transcendental  faculty  to' know  categorically  that 
water  must  be  wet.  No  special  light  is  necessary  to 
attain  to  the  understanding  that  deduction,  like  any  other 
profane  knowledge,  is  based  in  the  last  resort  on  em- 
pirical facts.  Yet,  after  all  inquiries  into  facts,  and  after 


144  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

all  understanding  of  their  bearing,  they  are  not  a  whit 
less  miraculous  than  before.  So,  for  instance,  we  know 
that  grape- juice  turns  almost  overnight  into  an  intox- 
icating liquor.  How  is  that  to  be  comprehended?  The 
chemist  will  tell  you  :  "  It  is  fermentation.  Grape-sugar, 
exposed  to  the  influence  of  heat  and  air,  turns  into  al- 
cohol." Thus  the  incomprehensible  is  explained,  the 
production  of  wine  is  a  chemical  process  belonging  to  the 
general  class  of  fermentation.  Facts  are  comprehended 
by  ranging  and  classifying  them  into  a  certain  system, 
and  not  by  dissolving  them  into  logical  alcohol.  Philo- 
sophic mysticism  is  an  undigested  remnant  of  the  theo- 
logical period.  In  order  to  dispose  of  both  of  them  in 
a  radical  manner  it  is  necessary  to  be  imbued  with  the 
knowledge  that  facts  do  not  rest  on  logical  grounds, 
but  conversely  that  the  fundamental  basis  of  all  logic  is 
ever  the  fact,  the  being,  the  external  reality. 

I  must  apologize,  my  friends,  for  troubling  you  with 
such  hair-splitting  dissertations.  I  am  quite  aware  that 
there  are  but  few  among  us  who  care  for  such  discus- 
sions, but  the  few  are  just  sufficient  for  our  purpose. 
It  is  necessary  that  some  of  us  should  be  able  to  face 
official  philosophy.  We  must  lay  bare  the  foundation  of 
our  theory  in  order  that  the  sight  of  its  granitic  rock 
shall  demonstrate  in  a  striking  manner  to  the  impartial 
observer  how  shifty  the  sands  are  on  which  the  braggarts 
of  the  existing  order  have  piled  up  their  contradictions. 
They  reason  without  any  system,  without  any  logic  or 
consistency.  They  have  advanced  the  proposition  that 
everything  must  have  a  cause,  a  beginning  and  an  end. 
But  how  do  they  demonstrate  it?  They  demonstrate  it 
with  the  belief  in  a  God  who  has  no  beginning,  and  in 
a  life  which  has  no  end.  The  same  lack  of  consistency 
is  to  be  found  in  the  politics  of  the  existing  order.  One 


THE  RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  145 

of  its  organic  laws  promises  freedom  of  public  meeting 
and  speech ;  but  where  the  people  make  use  of  that 
freedom  and  come  together  to  express  their  sentiments 
and  thoughts,  there  the  policeman  is  set  on  them.  Is 
this  system,  logic  or  consistency?  O,  yes!  It  is  the 
system  of  infamy.  All  the  deeds  and  thoughts  of  our 
rulers  are  concentrated  in  the  logical  idea :  We  are  at  the 
top  and  we  mean  to  stay  there  for  good. 

VI. 

Our  last  considerations  were  devoted  to  the  traditional 
saying :  "  Man  needs  religion,"  which  we  ventured  to 
translate  into  reasonable  language  by  declaring :  "  Man 
needs  system."  It  is  his  intellectual  need  to  gain  a 
safe  standpoint  from  which  he  could  survey  the  world. 
In  order  not  to  go  astray  in  the  midst  of  the  bewilder- 
ing multitude  of  phenomena,  man  divides  the  heavens 
into  constellations  of  stais,  the  cosmos  into  regions,  and 
likewise  our  earth  into  classes,  species,  families  and  in- 
dividuals. In  short,  he  gives  diversity  diversified  names. 
To  have  system  implies  the  ability  of  finding  one's  way 
and  of  classifying  things.  That  an  animal  is  the  subject 
of  zoology,  and  a  plant  the  subject  of  botany  is  easily 
grasped,  but  it  is  by  no  means  so  easy  to  tell  the 
branch  of  knowledge  where  such  notions  as  truth,  free- 
dom, justice,  etc.,  belong  to.  No  system  is  perfect  un- 
less it  has  found  a  place  for  every  phenomenon,  has 
classified  everything  and  has  made  provisions  for  every- 
thing. Founders  of  religion  as  well  as  philosophers  at- 
tempted to  make  such  systems,  but  none  has  stood  the 
test.  The  stream  of  time  has  brought  and  is  still  bring- 
ing to  light  new  phenomena,  new  experiences,  new 
things  for  which  no  provision  was  made.  They  don't 
fit  into  the  prevailing  system,  and  therefore  a  new  one 


146  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

was  necessary,  until  social-democracy  was  wise  enough 
to  construct  a  system  of  thought  sufficiently  comprehen- 
sive for  all  present  and  future  phenomena. 

This  is  apparently  an  overweening  assertion.  In  order 
to  justify  it  I  must  somewhat  retrace  the  steps  we  have 
taken  until  now.  As  the  theologians  look  for  a  God 
who  unites  in  his  personality  the  omnipotence  of  the 
world,  so  the  philosophers  have  been  searching  for  a  sys- 
tem which  concentrates  all  knowledge  in  a  single  knot, 
so  as  to  swallow  all  science  in  one  bite.  We  know,  how- 
ever, that  a  color  cannot  be  green  and  blue  and  yellow 
and  black  at  the  same  time;  that  is,  that  the  whole 
species  cannot  be  incorporated  in  one  individual.  All 
science  cannot  be  concentrated  in  a  single  human  being 
and  still  less  in  a  single  conception.  Yet,  I  ventured  to 
assert  that  we  possess  such  a  concentration.  Or  does  not 
the  conception  of  matter  contain  all  materials  of  the 
world  ? 

So,  too,  has  all  science  one  general  form  in  common, 
namely  the  inductive  method.  That  the  induction  is  the 
only  general  form  of  science,  and  that  induction  can  be 
applied  to  all  problems,  to  all  objects  —  this  conviction 
lends  to  social-democracy  its  systematic  steadiness,  its 
mental  superiority,  which  astonish  our  opponents.  We  do 
not  know  everything,  but  we  know  the  general  form  of 
all  science  and  use  it  as  a  touchstone  to  find  out  all  the 
tricks  played  against  the  people  by  the  henchmen  of  our 
rulers.  In  natural  science  the  inductive  method  is  well- 
known,  but  that  there  is  in  it  a  systematic  philosophy 
which  is  destined  to  put  an  end  to  all  religious,  philo- 
sophical and  political  humbug,  this  is  a  social-democratic 
novelty  and  acquisition. 

Our  opponents,  the  rulers  and  the  rich,  the  progressives, 
liberals  and  free-masons  are  also  advocates  of  induction 


THE   RELIGION   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  147 

—  but  only  insofar  as  it  suits  their  purpose.  They  di- 
vide everything :  the  people  into  masters  and  servants ; 
life  into  an  earthly  and  heavenly  one;  the  person  into 
body  and  soul ;  and  science  into  induction  and  deduction. 

Now,  dividing  and  classifying  cannot  be  objected  to, 
provided  that  there  is  system,  that  the  divided  parts  are 
kept  under  one  heading,  and  that  the  diversity  is  known 
to  be  but  a  gradual  one.  It  is  not  unreasonable  to  divide 
life  into  an  earthly  and  a  spiritual  one,  but  when  so  doing 
we  must  be  conscious  that  both  are  forms  of  the  self- 
same life,  and  that  both  are  of  equal  value.  Social-dem- 
ocrats, too,  have  a  body  and  a  soul.  Our  body  is  the 
sum  total  of  our  corporeal  qualities,  and  our  soul  is  the 
sum  total  of  our  mental  qualities.  Yet,  we  must  always 
remember  that  the  empirical  phenomenon  comprises  all 
matters  uniformly,  and  that  it  is  the  common  term  for 
flesh  and  soul,  for  body  and  spirit.  Soul  or  spirit  is  in 
our  opinion  an  attribute  of  the  world  and  not,  as  the 
priest  asserts  to  the  contrary,  the  world  the  attribute  or 
the  handiwork  of  the  spirit.  Darwin  teaches  the  descent 
of  man  from  animal.  He,  too,  differentiates  man  from 
animal,  but  only  as  two  products  of  the  same  material, 
as  two  varieties  of  the  same  species,  as  two  sequences 
in  the  same  system.  A  systematic  and  consistent  classi- 
fication of  this  kind,  as  well  as  the  cosmic  unity  is  un- 
known to  our  opponents.  In  this  respect  the  good  old 
religious  life  must  be  commended.  It  had  at  least  a 
certain  system.  Earthly  and  heavenly  life,  lordship  and 
slavery,  faith  and  knowledge,  were  all  under  the  united 
and  centralized  government  of  Him  who  said :  "  I  am 
the  Lord,  thy  God." 

I  know  quite  well,  that  the  believers,  too,  have  a  dual- 
ism and  are  guilty  of  a  relative  lack  of  system.  I  am 
quite  aware  that  they  are  fluttering  between  heaven  and 


148  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

earth.  However,  before  the  liberal  wedge  of  doubt  had 
entered  the  religious  flesh,  when  religion  was  a  more 
serious  affair,  it  was  also  less  dualistic.  The  devil  was 
but  a  tool,  the  earthly  life  but  a  transitional  term  of 
probation  for  the  eternal  life.  One  was  subordinated  to 
the  other.  There  was  a  center  of  gravity  and  a  system. 
In  comparison  with  modern  half-heartedness  and  free- 
masonry, religion  did  encompass  the  whole  in  a  mon- 
istic manner. 

This  consistent  encompassing  of  the  whole,  my  dear 
friends,  is  a  difficult  problem  with  which  the  human 
mind  has  grappled  since  it  began  working.  The  nine- 
teenth century  has  solved  the  problem  and  given  phil- 
osophy a  system.  If  in  spite  of  all  the  light  and  leading 
of  our  thinkers  and  scientists,  people  are  still  groping 
in  the  dark,  it  must  be  due  to  political  reasons.  Re- 
actionary ill-will  has  scented  the  revolutionary  conse- 
quences of  the  inductive  method.  Hegel  himself  was 
already  cautious  enough  to  put  his  light  under  the  bushel. 
And  his  more  courageous  followers  could  not  make 
headway  at  a  time  when  conservative  vileness  governed 
supreme.  Even  to  this  day  the  privileged  classes  are  do- 
ing their  utmost  to  keep  the  smouldering  embers  well 
under  the  ashes.  Comrades,  let  us  fan  them  into  flames. 
When  they  are  aglow  all  the  children  of  the  night  will 
disappear. 

The  stomach  can't  go  on  without  food  and  drink,  nor 
the  head  without  a  system,  that  is,  without  a  connected 
view  of  life,  a  "  final  cause  "  from  which  everything  pro- 
ceeds. This  final  cause  is  rather  a  ticklish  thing. 

According  to  the  religious  systems  God  is  the  final 
cause.  Liberal  ideologues  believe  it  possible  to  base 
everything  on  reason.  Prejudiced  materialists  find  in 
hidden  atoms  the  final  cause  of  the  universe,  while  social- 


THE  RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  149 

democrats  demonstrate  everything  by  induction.  We 
hold  to  induction  on  principle,  that  is  we  know  that 
knowledge  cannot  be  got  by  deduction,  by  drawing  from 
pure  reason,  but  that  it  is  gained  through  the  instrumen- 
tality of  reason  from  experience. 

That  logical  method  is  already  known  to  other  peo- 
ple, but  they  lack  the  systematic  knowledge  of  it,  they 
lack  consistency.  The  philosophy  of  the  anti-socialists 
is  not  homogeneous;  it  is  rather  a  mixture  of  induction 
and  deduction.  They  know  how  to  induce,  but  they 
don't  know  the  system  of  induction.  They  are  well  ac- 
quainted with  details,  but  they  utterly  fail  when  dealing 
with  the  general  aspect  of  the  world.  They  can  readily 
find  the  beginning  and  end  of  a  certain  thing,  they  can 
tell  in  concrete  cases  which  is  sham  and  which  reality. 
But  when  confronted  with  the  question  of  the  general 
beginning  or  of  the  general  relation  of  truth,  justice, 
energy,  matter,  unity  and  multiplicity,  cause  and  effect 
—  they  are  at  their  wits'  end  and  the  rearing  of  the 
Tower  of  Babel  begins.  Some  quote  the  Revelation, 
others  take  refuge  in  Kant  or  in  some  other  venerable 
classic,  still  others  forsake  theology  and  philosophy  al- 
together and  apply  themselves  to  scientific  experiments 
and  expect  the  solution  of  the  problem  from  natural 
science. 

In  the  face  of  such  a  helpless  muddle  international 
social-democracy  is  proud  to  know  the  "  final  cause  "  on 
which  everything  rests,  and  to  possess  a  scientific  basis 
for  everything,  and  a  systematic  philosophy.  Our  de- 
cided superiority  of  principle  is  clearly  manifested  by  the 
unanimity  of  our  aspirations  and  demands,  while  our  op- 
ponents are  hopelessly  divided  on  all  questions  of  religion 
and  politics.  To  be  sure,  there  are  differences  of  opinion 
in  our  ranks  too,  yet  the  anti-socialists  have  no  reason 


150  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

whatsoever  to  rail  at  the  dissensions  among  the  social- 
democrats.  We  quarrel  about  detail,  about  forms  of  or- 
ganizations, about  practical  and  tactical  questions,  but  in 
general  principles  and  in  matters  of  theory  we  stand  as 
a  solid  and  united  phalanx,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  for  we 
have  what  the  Old-  and  New-Catholics,  Protestants  and 
Freethinkers  would  like  to  have :  we  have  system.  The 
beginning  and  end  of  all  philosophy  is  clear  to  us. 

Of  course,  comrades,  this  does  not  mean  that  every 
social-democrat  possesses  a  full  knowledge  of  the  sys- 
tem. Not  all  of  us  have  received  a  systematic  training, 
else  there  would  be  no  need  for  my  preaching.  What  I 
ventured  to  assert  is  that  your  social-democratic  aspira- 
tions proceed  from  systematic  science.  I  assert  that  the 
inductive  demonstration  of  a  thing  is  the  only,  true, 
scientific  demonstration,  and  that  a  consistent  application 
of  induction  yields  very  remarkable  anti-religious  and 
revolutionary  results.  I  should  very  much  like  to  enter 
into  details  illustrating  my  assertion,  but  I  must  for  the 
present  abstain  from  that  in  order  to  first  consolidate  the 
foundation  of  our  philosophy. 

I  repeat,  and  as  a  preacher  who  is  anxious  to  drive 
home  his  teaching  I  am  entitled  to  repeat :  In  the  place 
of  religion  social-democracy  puts  a  systematic  conception 
of  the  universe. 

This  philosophy  finds  its  "  final  cause "  in  the  real 
conditions.  The  philosophy  of  the  Liberals  acts  in  the 
same  way  in  natural  science  and  in  business  only,  while 
in  matters  of  human  society  it  looks  for  the  final  cause 
in  the  revelations  of  reason,  instead  of  religion.  They 
want  their  notions  of  justice,  truth  and  liberty  to  be  the 
models  for  an  equitable,  true  and  free  society.  The  fact 
that  feudal  as  well  as  liberal  and  clerical  ideals  of  justice, 
freedom,  political  truth  and  wisdom  have  been  moulded 


THE  RELIGION  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  !$! 

after  the  material  interests  of  those  respective  parties, 
could  not  fail  to  teach  us  that  ideals  do  not  spring  from 
the  human  head,  but  are  formed  by  the  human  head 
from  empirical  materials. 

Therefore  we  are  able  to  mould  consciously  and  with 
systematic  consistency  our  notions  of  justice  and  liberty 
after  our  material  needs,  that  is  the  needs  of  the  pro- 
letariat, of  the  masses.  The  real  bodily  need  and  the 
present  possibility  of  a  "  life  worth  living  "  is  the  "  final 
cause  "  from  which  spring  the  equity,  truth  and  ration- 
ality of  the  social-democratic  demands.  In  the  system 
of  induction  the  body  precedes  the  spirit  and  the  fact  the 
notion. 

The  frequent  use  of  one  and  the  same  word  having 
a  soporific  effect  on  the  mind,  I  shall  for  a  change  call 
our  system  "  The  System  of  Experimental  Truth."  The 
dawdlers  of  the  bourgeois  parties  talk  a  good  deal  of 
divine,  moral,  logical,  etc.,  truths.  We,  however,  know 
of  no  divine  truth,  we  but  know  the  empirical  truth.  We 
may  divide  it  into  parts  and  give  them  special  names,  but 
its  general  character  will  remain.  Truths,  no  matter 
how  we  call  them,  are  based  on  physical,  corporeal,  ma- 
terial experience.  As  such  they  are  but  parts  or  classes 
of  the  experimental  system.  We  cut  only  from  one, 
from  one  whole.  We  demonstrate  our  propositions  em- 
pirically and  really,  and  our  procedure  is  systematic  and 
logical.  Could  there  be,  my  friends,  anything  more  evi- 
dent than  such  evidence? 

Having  laid  bare  the  foundation  we  proceed  to  look 
at  the  structure  of  our  universal  system  from  the  most 
elevated  point  of  vantage.  We  see  the  infinite  diversity 
of  things  to  consist  of  the  same  homogeneous,  empirical 
material.  All  diverse  qualities  possess  one  general  qual- 
ity. How  different  they  may  be,  big  or  small,  ponderable 


152  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

or  imponderable,  spiritual  or  physical,  all  things  of  the 
world  have  this  in  common,  that  they  are  empirical  ob- 
jects of  our  intellect.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  in- 
ductive system  the  world  and  all  it  contains  forms  but 
one  homogeneous  object.  All  its  details  are  but  modal- 
ities of  the  absolute  unity.  Physical  phenomena  or  em- 
pirical materials  are  the  universal  species  in  relation  to 
which  all  other  classes  are  but  subdivisions.  It  is  the 
only  substance  and  truth,  everything  else  is  but  a  quality 
and  a  relative  manifestation.  Solid  and  liquid,  wood  and 
metal,  are  quite  correctly  summed  up  under  the  notion 
"  matter."  Why  should  we  not  be  justified  in  summing 
up  all  things  under  the  term  "  empirical  truth  "  or  "  em- 
pirical phenomenon  ? "  Nothing  can  prevent  us  then 
from  dividing  it  into  organic  and  inorganic,  into  physical 
and  moral,  into  good  and  bad,  etc.  Through  the  common 
origin  all  antagonisms  are  conciliated  and  bridged  over. 
Diversity  is  but  a  form;  in  their  essence  all  things  are 
alike.  The  final  cause  of  all  things  is  the  empirical 
phenomenon.  The  empirical  material  is  the  general  ele- 
mentary substance.  It  is  absolute,  eternal  and  omnipres- 
ent. Where  it  ends,  all  reasoning  is  at  an  end. 

The  inductive  system  may  as  well  be  called  the 
dialectic  or  evolutionary  system.  Here  we  find  what 
is  more  and  more  being  proved  by  natural  science,  that 
seemingly  essential  differences  are  but  differences  in  de- 
gree. However  strict  we  may  be  in  determining  the 
specific  characteristics  which  differentiate  the  organic 
from  the  inorganic  or  the  plants  from  the  'animals,  Na- 
ture shows  that  the  lines  of  demarcation  disappear  and 
the  differences  and  antagonisms  coalesce.  The  cause  ef- 
fects and  the  effect  causes.  The  truth  appears  and  the 
appearance  is  true.  As  heat  and  cold  differ  but  in  de- 
gree, so  do  good  and  bad  —  they  are  all  relative  manifes- 


THE   RELIGION   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  153 

tations  of  the  same  substance,  and  forms  or  classes  of 
physical  experience. 

I  see  in  the  audience  some  new  guests  to  whom  the 
monism  which  I  preach  appears  to  be  so  strange  and 
unheard  of  that  they  are  very  anxious  to  hurl  against 
me  the  most  insipid  objections.  They  would  like  to  aski 
how  it  was  possible  to  prove  that  empirical  material  is 
the  primary  component  part  of  all  objects  of  science? 
And  are  there  no  such  things  as  God,  pure  reason  and 
moral  world? 

By  such  questions  you  may  see,  my  friends,  how 
deeply  rooted  irrationality  is  in  man.  God,  pure  reason, 
moral  world  and  many  other  things  do  not  consist  of 
empirical  material;  they  are  not  forms  of  the  physical 
phenomenon  and  we  deny  therefore  their  existence.  Yet, 
the  ideas,  with  which  this  kind  of  reasoning  operates, 
have  appeared  physically  and  have  a  real  existence  and 
can  be  made  the  subject-matter  of  our  inductive  exam- 
ination. The  terms  physical,  empirical,  etc.,  are  gen- 
erally understood  in  their  narrower  sense.  I  supple- 
ment them  therefore  with  the  adjective  "  experimental." 

The  denominational  systems  of  the  religious,  and  the 
rational  systems  of  the  freethinkers  put  up  different 
claims.  The  system  of  empirical  truth,  to  which  social- 
democracy  adheres,  can  only  be  based  on  induction;  it 
recognizes  only  those  notions,  doctrines  and  theories 
which  are  consciously  taken  from  empirical  material. 
From  the  height  of  that  system  we  discover  the  bridge 
which  unites  philosophy  with  natural  science.  The 
bridge  is  constructed  from  one  rock,  the  rock  of  all  wis- 
dom which  consists  of  the  knowledge  that  the  human  in- 
tellect is  an  inductive  instrument.  All  specific  disciplines 
are  but  applications  of  this  general  truth  and  science. 
The  intellect  is  the  commander-in-chief  of  all  knowledge. 


154  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

The  specialties  of  science  are  his  subordinates.  The 
systems  of  astronomy  or  chemistry,  botany  or  optics  are 
departments  of  the  general  system. 

Those  of  my  audience,  who  despite  having  carefully 
followed  my  dissertations,  have  not  grasped  yet  the  full 
bearing  of  socialist  philosophy,  I  beg  to  consider  how 
impossible  it  is  to  do  full  justice  to  a  subject  of  that 
magnitude  within  the  compass  of  a  half  an  hour.  And 
if  I  wanted  to  work  it  out  more  completely,  I  should 
fear  to  tire  my  audience. 

However,  many  an  opportunity  will  present  itself  in 
the  course  of  our  lectures  to  take  up  the  matter  again. 
For  the  present  it  must  suffice  to  have  laid  bare  the 
foundation  and  to  have  strengthened  and  solidified  our 
party-consciousness  by  turning  the  attention  of  the  com- 
rades to  the  first  principles  of  socialism. 


ETHICS  OF  SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY 

TWO   SERMONS 
(VOLKSSTAAT,    1 8/5) 


Comrades  and  Friends: 

It  is  the  desire  of  our  party  to  realize  that  which  the 
enlightened  minds  of  all  ages  and  nations  wanted  to 
realize:  truth  and  justice.  We  do  not  want  the  truth 
and  justice  of  the  clergy.  Ours  is  the  material,  empirical 
truth  of  applied  science  which  we  want  first  to  know  and 
then  to  practice.  Impelled  by  the  necessity  of  realizing 
a  life  worth  living,  we  are  interested  in  various  kinds  of 
truth,  and  especially  also  in  that  which  is  true  justice, 
or  in  the  "  moral  world." 

The  world  cannot  exist  without  morality  and  order, 
not  because,  as  the  parson  has  it,  they  came  from  heaven, 
or  that  they  were,  according  to  professorial  wisdom, 
prescribed  by  some  eternal  code  of  laws,  but  because 
they  are  a  universal,  palpable  need.  In  one  of  my  last 
sermons  I  have  already  discussed  the  matter  how  we 
international  social-democrats  are  trying  to  systematically 
demonstrate  all  our  thoughts  by  real  or  experimental 
facts.  Let  us  in  our  present  disquisition  of  morality 
apply  "  our  system "  and  see  how  it  works.  Also  the 
ethical  law  cannot  lay  claim  to  more  consideration  and 
validity  than  is  warranted  by  its  material  basis. 

The  animals,  apes  or  rabbits,  have  neither  shame  nor 

i5S 


156  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

morality,  neither  fidelity  nor  faith.  At  least,  their  moral 
degree  equals  naught.  The  Caffirs  have  but  little  of  it, 
our  bourgeois  class  slightly  more,  and  it  is  left  to  the 
socialists  to  teach  them  what  is  really  just.  In  other 
words :  morality  is  the  result  of  the  historic  development, 
it  is  a  product  of  evolution.  It  has  its  origin  in  the 
social  instincts  of  the  human  race,  in  the  material  neces- 
sity of  social  life.  Seeing  that  the  ideals  of  social  de- 
mocracy are  one  and  all  directed  towards  a  higher  order 
of  social  life,  they  must  necessarily  be  moral  ideals. 

As  long  as  mankind  has  been  grouped  in  clans,  hordes, 
tribes,  nations  and  states,  some  kind  of  order  and  laws 
have  been  necessary.  But  we  cannot  tell  beforehand 
what  those  laws  and  institutions  contain,  or  in  other 
words,  what  conduct  is  to  be  regarded  as  just  and  equit- 
able, for  that  depends  on  the  conditions  in  which  de- 
terminate social  organization  lives.  The  most  import- 
ant conditions  are  those  of  production  of  material  goods. 
They  decide,  in  the  last  resort,  what  is  to  be  regarded 
as  just  and  equitable.  But  inasmuch  as  they  are  not 
unchangeable  and  abiding,  the  laws  of  morality  cannot 
be  eternal.  Indeed,  they  change  with  the  changes  in 
political  economy.  The  morality  and  laws  of  hunters, 
shepherds,  knights  and  bourgeois  differ  greatly  from 
each  other.  As  far  as  political  economy  is  based  on 
small  private  means  of  production,  the  old  saying  holds 
good  : 

"  Remember  hell  and  you  are  bless'd. 
What's  not  your  own  let  smartly  rest." 

To-day  private  economy  has  reached  its  climax;  the 
administrators  of  the  national  wealth  are  ardent  individ- 
ualists. Private  property  is  the  highest  ideal ;  its  whole 
mechanism,  administrative  and  legal,  constitutes  the 


ETHICS  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  157 

"  moral  world."  What  has  until  now  been  considered 
as  moral  and  just  is  rapidly  fading  away.  Honesty,  up- 
rightness, integrity,  family  discipline,  diligence  and  thrift 
are  virtues  of  the  lower  middle  class,  of  respectable 
peasants,  artisans,  tradespeople,  who  are  trying  to  get 
some  legacy  and  to  perserve  it,  or  to  carry  on  their  little 
business  in  the  way  their  forefathers  did.  Modern  capital 
with  its  new  instruments  of  production  is  slowly  crowd- 
ing out  all  those  classes  and  their  moral  conceptions. 
People  who  get  rich  in  one  night,  or  who  carry  on  ma- 
chine bakeries,  have  a  different  moral  standard  from 
those  who  earn  an  honest  dollar  or  two  a  day,  or  who 
knead  the  dough  in  the  sweat  of  their  brow.  We  don't 
know  to-day  whether  five,  five  and  twenty,  or  five  hun- 
dred per  cent,  are  "  honest  earnings  "  or  not.  Our  pillars 
of  society  just  manage  to  escape  penal  servitude  and  our 
state  attorneys  are  getting  corrupt.  The  capitalist  econ- 
omy has  a  disintegrating  effect  upon  morality  and  prop- 
erty. Our  higher  classes,  like  the  Turks,  buy  themselves 
as  many  women  as  their  income  permits.  Polygamy  and 
the  keeping  of  mistresses  have  become  the  custom,  the 
ethos,  and  are  an  ethical  fact.  Indeed,  free  love  is  not 
a  whit  less  moral  than  Christian  monogamy.  But  the 
reason  why  we  object  to  polygamy  does  not  lie  in  the 
great  variety  of  one's  love-making,  but  in  the  venality 
of  the  women,  in  the  degradation  of  the  human  being 
and  in  the  disgraceful  rule  of  Mammon. 

Morality  in  human  evolution  is  similar  to  matter  in 
natural  evolution :  the  essence  is  abiding,  the  forms  are 
fleeting. 

"  A  great  part  of  our  lower  classes,"  writes 
Treitschke,  "  have  become  in  matters  of  dress  and  in 
several  other  external  things,  more  like  the  middle 
classes,  but  in  their  sense  of  duty  and  honor  they  are 


158  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

farther  than  ever  from  the  educated  classes."  But  that 
"  great  part  of  the  lower  classes  "  are  not  only  aiming 
at  widening  the  ethical  gulf  between  themselves  and  the 
other  classes,  they  are  also  at  work  to  acquire  different 
philosophical  conceptions.  The  religious  conception  of 
knaves  and  fools  is  selfish  enough  to  mistake  its  own  in- 
terests for  those  of  the  community.  The  ruling  classes 
have  always  and  everywhere  shown  the  disposition  to 
consider  their  own  selfish  morality  as  the  general  ethical 
law  and  have  tried  to  impose  it  as  such  upon  the  people. 
Socialists  are  not  likely  to  be  caught  by  such  priestly 
snares.  As  far  back  as  1848  our  "  Communist  Mani- 
festo "  declared :  "  The  ruling  ideas  of  each  age  have 
ever  been  the  ideas  of  its  ruling  class."  Now  Social- 
democracy  rebels  against  all  class-rule  and  against  all  rul- 
ing conceptions  of  duty,  honor  and  culture.  We  quite  ad- 
mit that,  despite  all  historical  changes,  there  have  always 
been  officers  and  privates.  "  And  so  will  it  be  forever," 
say  the  officers.  But  the  privates  have  their  own  views 
about  that;  they  cannot  fail  to  notice  that  in  the  period 
which  has  passed  since  the  warrior  chiefs,  the  patriarchs, 
Caesars  and  knights,  to  the  present  captains  of  industry, 
the  people  have  become  more  and  more  self-conscious  and 
independent;  they  find  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
progressive  development  of  history  and  arrive  quite  nat- 
urally at  the  reasonable  conclusion  to  cut  the  rope  which 
Treitschke,  Sybel,  etc.,  have  laid  down  as  the  "  founda- 
tion of  society."  The  professors  are  undoubtedly  right 
in  saying  that  domination  was  heretofore  a  necessary  evil 
or  a  fact  justified  by  reason.  But  also  human  progress 
towards  freedom  is  an  undeniable  fact.  To  our  rulers, 
however,  the  lesson  of  history  does  not  consist  in  free- 
dom, but  in  dominion.  They  are  only  concerned  with  the 
question-  whether  the  officers  will  remain  forever  or 


ETHICS  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  159 

whether  they  will  have  to  go.  We  social-democrats 
boldly  assert  that  they  will  have  to  go  overboard  in  order 
that  morality  may  prevail.  We  assert,  furthermore,  that 
the  revolution  of  the  present "  moral  world  "  is  a  necessary 
act  of  true  morality.  Thus  our  views  of  morality  differ 
greatly  from  those  of  the  ethical  braggarts. 

And  now  I  should  like  to  explain  to  you,  dear  com- 
rades, in  words  as  concise  as  possible  in  what  the  real 
essence  of  morality  consists.  Guided  by  our  dialectic- 
materialist  conception  and  method,  we  look  first,  as  usual 
in  all  our  researches,  for  the  material,  also  in  this  case 
for  the  ethical  material,  making  use  hereby  of  the  term- 
inology of  every-day  language.  True  peaches  are  all 
those  which  people  usually  call  peaches.  There  are  many 
kinds  of  them,  as  of  morality.  There  it  is  a  moral  law  to 
slaughter  the  enemy,  to  fry  and  eat  him;  here,  on  the 
contrary,  the  moral  law  commands  to  love  the  enemy 
and  do  good  to  him.  Be  a  crafty  rascal,  says  the 
Spartan  law ;  sanctify  property,  pay  the  debts,  commands 
the  bourgeois.  In  view  of  such  contradictions  how  are 
we  to  pull  the  sparks  of  truth  out  of  the  fire  ?  Evidently 
by  extracting  the  general  out  of  the  diversity,  by  find- 
ing what  it  is  that  has  constituted  the  moral  and  just 
under  all  conditions.  It  cannot  consist  in  something 
particular,  but  in  the  general  in  the  abstraction  of  the 
whole  moral  material.  To  find  such  a  rule  it  is  there- 
fore necessary  to  inquire  into  a  sufficient  quantity  of 
moral  facts;  in  other  words,  we  must  use  the  inductive 
method.  By  means  of  this  method  we  find  that  the 
moral  world  generally  consists  of  the  considerations  dic- 
tated by  the  social  need  of  a  given  human  organization. 
Then  we  find  the  undeniable  fact  that  that  social  neces- 
sity develops  with  the  progress  of  productive  forces 
called  civilization,  that  the  social  instinct  of  man  grows, 


l6o  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

that  human  association  becomes  broader  and  deeper, 
and  that  morality  becomes  more  moral.  Even  Christian 
morality  demands  that  the  limited  brotherly  feeling  of 
the  clan,  horde,  nation  and  state  shall  expand  into  in- 
ternational brotherhood.  But  its  inordinate  religious 
spirit,  its  admixture  of  hypocrisy  and  foolery,  prevented 
the  ideal  from  being  realized.  It  is  economic  materialism 
only,  it  is  but  the  communistic  re-construction  of  society 
on  the  basis  of  material  work,  which  will  bring  about 
the  true  association  of  men.  Only  from  the  abolition  of 
class-rule,  from  the  transformation  of  the  selfish  capital- 
istic organizations  into  co-operative  instruments  of  pro- 
duction will  issue  the  true  brotherhood  of  man,  the  true 
morality  and  justice. 

No  divine  oracle,  no  inner  voice  or  pure  deduction 
from  the  brain  shall  teach  us  moral  truth  or  any  other 
truth.  That  ideological  way  leads  only  to  an  insipid 
hankering  after  a  supernatural,  unchanging  and  un- 
changeable truth.  A  clear  scientific  result  can  only 
be  won  by  induction;  it  is  always  based  on  experimental 
and  verifiable  facts;  in  our  present  case,  on  the  es- 
tablished fact,  that  men  need  and  serve  each  other.  That 
what  is  right  to  one  person  is  equitable  to  another  one 
is  as  certain  as  that  men  need  one  another.  With  the 
growth  of  the  necessity  for  mutual  service  among  men, 
their  association  becomes  more  extensive  and  intensive, 
their  intercourse  more  considerate,  and  their  morality  at- 
tains to  a  higher  and  truer  standard.  Social-democracy 
is  thus  quite  aware  that  man  is  limited  by  the  nature  of 
things.  But  having  recognized  the  general,  or  the  so- 
called  true  essence  of  morality,  we  refuse  to  be  mystified 
by  those  who  want  to  palm  off  a  particular  phenomenon 
or  form  for  the  general  essence  of  morality.  [  Whether 
people  marry  or  live  in  free-love,  whether  private  prop- 


ETHICS   OF    SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  l6l 

erty  is  sacred  or  wicked,  whether  revenge  is  permitted  or 
prohibited,  are  customs  which  may  be  qualified  as  moral 
or  immoral  in  the  same  measure  as  they  promote  or 
hinder  human  progress. )  And  with  social-democrats,  hu- 
man evolution  is  no  mere  ideological  drivel  or  spiritual 
perfection  for  which  there  is  no  material  test  and  which 
is  therefore  exposed  to  the  wildest  interpretations.  With 
us,  human  progress  means,  as  often  stated,  the  growing 
control  of  man  over  nature  to  serve  his  needs.  In  view 
of  that  great  purpose,  religion,  art,  science  and  morality 
are  simply  helpmates.  I  repeat :  the  narrower  or  wider, 
the  looser  or  closer  state  of  social  aggregation  changes 
the  law  of  morality.  The  higher  or  lower  grade  of  mor- 
ality is  measured  by  the  degree  of  social  interdependence. 
Yet,  the  mere  knowledge  of  the  moral  law  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  be  able  to  make  use  of  it  in  practice ;  the  general 
conditions  must  be  ripe  for  it.  Theoretically  we  may 
easily  grasp  the  highest  degree  of  morality;  in  prac- 
tice, however,  things  go  through  their  historical  stages. 
The  customs  of  the  barbarians  must  pass  before  we  at- 
tain to  higher  ones.  Where  people  live  by  hunting  and 
fishing,  there  the  sense  of  brotherhood  of  man  cannot  be 
as  developed  as  where  the  proletarians  of  all  countries 
are  striving  for  unity. 

That  "  all  men  are  brothers  "  and  that  *'  thou  shalt  love 
thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  was  well  known  before  Christ. 
That  thy  neighbor  meant  any  human  being  who  most 
urgently  needed  help  was  likewise  recognized  several 
thousand  years  ago,  it  was  turned  into  a  dogma  and 
hedged  round  with  divine  blessings  and  cursings.  But 
that  does  not  prevent  our  educated  believers  from  main- 
taining in  commerce  and  on  the  pulpit  the  diametrically 
opposed  proposition :  "  Every  man  for  himself." 

Religious  *.ruth  U  4  fantastic  ideology.     According  to 


l62  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

it  love  of  humanity  is  based  on  the  belief  in  God  and  on 
freedom  of  will.  And  what  is  the  result  01  it?  The 
war  of  classes  and  of  nations.  We  want  to  follow  the 
opposite  way  and  to  establish  eternal  peace  on  a  brotherly 
organization  of  economics.  As  in  family  life,  where  the 
man  tills  the  soil,  the  woman  cooks  its  produce  and  the 
children  gather  firewood,  domestic  harmony  is  based 
on  domestic  economy,  and  spiritual  peace  on  material  co- 
operation, so  will  love  of  humanity  only  be  realized  when 
the  production  of  material  goods  will  be  socialized.  Na- 
ture has  undoubtedy  implanted  in  our  hearts  a  yearning 
for  brotherhood.  But  the  heart  is  a  very  unreliable  com- 
pass, and  even  will  and  knowledge,  as  all  ideological 
factors  in  general,  are  not  to  be  trusted  as  guides  if  they 
are  without  any  material  basis.  Else  it  would  be  quite 
incomprehensible  why  there  is  so  little  love  of  humanity 
among  the  ruling  classes.  If  they  have  their  pockets  full 
of  dollars  they  will  surely  help  their  destitute  brother  with 
a  few  cents.  But  can  we  call  that  loving  kindness? 
However,  it  is  not  love  nor  help  which  is  the  guiding 
rule  of  our  time,  but  hammer  or  anvil.  In  reality  it  is 
thus:  who  does  not  want  to  be  a  servant  must  try  to 
become  a  master.  Under  such  conditions  it  is  idle  to 
hope  that  people  will  sacrifice  realities  for  ideal  precepts. 
We  are  not  sentimental  enough  to  expect  such  things. 
Though  we  use  moral  arguments  in  our  struggle  against 
the  bourgeois,  we  do  all  we  can  .to  stimulate  our  class 
consciousness.  We  preach  eternal  peace  and  stimulate 
the  class  struggle.  We  want  to  abolish  all  domination  by 
establishing  our  own  domination.  These  contradictions 
appear  to  our  scholars  and  professors  too  scholarly.  But 
already  my  grandmother  knew  that  those  who  make 
every  day  Sunday  have  no  Sunday,  that  is,  where  all 
govern  nobody  governs.  When  a  handful  of  people  now 


ETHICS  OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  163 

control  all  the  means  of  production,  then  their  rule  is  a 
curse  to  humanity.  When  however  the  working  class 
overcomes  their  oppressors,  wrests  from  them  their  power 
and  takes  over  the  administration  of  the  commonwealth, 
then  all  class  rule  ceases  and  democratic  rule  begins. 
The  working  class  is  but  nominally  a  class,  in  reality 
they  are  the  people  whose  rule  is  no  domination  but 
a  morally,  that  is,  socially  justified  regime) 

The  bourgeois  class  are  fantastic  in  theory,  but  in 
practice  they  are  quite  sober  and  provident  moralists 
without  any  exaggerated  notion  of  benevolence.  Their 
practical  morality  is  adapted  to  circumstances.  That  is 
as  it  ought  to  be,  and  we  shall  follow  their  example. 
But  we  reject  their  queer  theories  according  to  which 
morality  is  an  idea  which  they  believe  to  have  received 
from  some  lofty  regions.  In  their  opinion  this  wicked 
world  ought  to  be  shaped  after  that  idea.  Here  our 
ways  separate.  We  conceive  the  real  world  with  its 
human  history  as  the  living  material,  out  of  which  we 
consciously  produce  the  abstract  idea  of  morality,  the 
ideal  morality.  At  the  same  time  social-democracy  is  at 
work  to  realize  the  ideal  of  brotherhood  by  a  social  re- 
construction of  political  economy. 

Ideas,  we  again  repeat  that  cornerstone  of  our  phil- 
osophy, must  be  consciously  based  on  experimental  ma- 
terial, they  must  be  won  by  induction  if  we  desire  to 
be  clear  about  their  meaning  and  import.  And  that  ap- 
plies to  moral  and  political  ideas  no  less  than  to  scien- 
tific ideas.  From  the  religious  standpoint,  the  world  is 
a  machine  which  must  have  its  mechanic.  Here  things 
are  to  be  conceived  as  having  their  origin  in  the  idea,  as 
having  sprung  from  the  divine  idea.  The  ideas  are  ac- 
cording to  that  a  kind  of  transcendental  matrix.  Nowa- 
days, however,  sensible  men  are  quite  aware  that  the 


164  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

ideas  of  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdom  were  not 
the  models  after  which  those  objects  were  made,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  that  the  ideas  are  mental  abstractions  of 
those  objects.  Quite  in  the  same  manner  we  have  to 
rid  the  ethical  idea  of  its  transcendentalism.  Ideas  are 
notions.  Notions  may  arbitrarily  be  conceived  in  a  nar- 
rower or  wider  sense.  The  notion  of  nature  embraces 
the  whole  cosmos;  the  notion  of  organic  embraces  but  a 
part  of  nature;  the  notion  of  plant  or  animal  a  part  of 
organic,  etc.  With  our  ideas  we  embrace  arbitrarily  a 
smaller  or  larger  part  of  the  world  wide  sphere  of  ex- 
perience. It  is  the  nature  of  the  idea  to  be  arbitrarily 
conceived  in  a  narrower  or  wider  sense.  The  idea  of  an- 
imal kingdom  may  include  animals  which  may  be  re- 
garded as  plants  and,  on  the  other  hand,  also  men  who 
may,  perhaps,  object  to  such  a  classification.  The  truth 
is  that  ideas  cannot  be  strictly  enclosed  within  their 
seeming  boundaries.  And  so  it  is  with  moral  ideas,  their 
limits  cannot  be  clearly  marked.  There  are  actions 
which  are  of  less  concern  to  society  than  to  the  person 
who  performs  them,  yet  we  cannot  deny  them  a  certain 
moral  value,  as  for  instance  cleanliness,  temperance,  etc. 
An  eminently  moral  activity  is  the  labor  of  the  scholar, 
that  drives  hirh  over  ocean  and  deserts  to  face  danger  and 
privation,  and  to  suffer  and  die  in  search  of  truth.  Yet 
we  call  all  these  actions  virtue  and  morality,  because  they 
have  a  collective  or  social  value,  which  proves  the  cor- 
rectness of  our  definition  of  morality. 

In  conclusion,  I  should  like  to  reply  to  one  objection : 
If  morality  has  no  divine  origin,  but  is  a  bodily  instinct, 
why  should  those  be  responsible  who  are  deficient  in 
that  instinct  and  therefore  commit  crimes  against  the 
social  order?  Pray,  remember,  my  friends,  that  the 
social  sense  is  also  a  product  of  evolution;  it  may  be 


ETHICS   OF    SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  165 

missing  or  stunted  in  the  ignorant  and  uneducated,  who 
must  therefore  be  taught  by  humanized  disciplinary 
means. 

In  the  eyes  of  our  opponents  we  socialists  are  "  ma- 
terialists "  —  that  is,  people  without  enthusiasm  for 
ideals  who  are  dull-witted  and  only  like  to  hear  about 
eating  and  drinking  —  or  who  care  only  about  matters 
which  can  be  weighed  and  measured.  In  order  to  abuse 
us  they  give  to  materialism  a  narrow  and  disreputable 
definition.  To  such  an  artful  idealism  we  oppose  moral 
truth,  that  is,  an  idea  or  ideal  which  has  either  be- 
come flesh  or  is  on  the  point  of  becoming  flesh.  Where 
in  heaven  or  on  earth  or  anywhere  else  is  there  an 
ideal  which  is  as  truly  reasonable,  as  moral  and  sublime 
as  the  idea  of  international  social-democracy?  Here  the 
word  of  Christian  love  is  going  to  be  materialized.  The 
lamentable  brothers  in  Christo  shall  become  brothers  in- 
deed, and  in  the  struggle  for  transforming  the  religious 
vale  of  tears  into  a  real  state  of  the  people.  Amen. 

II 

Dear  Comrades  and  Friends: 

Before  we  proceed  with  our  discussion  on  morality  I 
should  like  to  sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  essence  of  the 
foregoing  chapter.  We  have  found  that  different  stages 
of  human  evolution  have  different  moral  laws,  and 
even  so  contradictory  ones  that  virtue  is  in  one  place 
what  is  vice  in  another.  The  ethical  doctrines  disagree 
as  much  as  the  religious  denominations.  Each  of  them 
claims  to  be  the  only  true  and  genuine  one.  And  in 
order  to  arrive  at  an  undisputed  view  on  a  much  dis- 
puted subject  we  followed  the  same  course  by  which 
natural  science  arrives  at  its  valid  conclusions.  We  ac- 


l66  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

cepted  as  moral  everything  which  is  generally  regarded 
as  such  and  searched  as  Humboldt  advises,  in  the  variety 
of  facts  for  mental  unity.  We  have  found  that  the  var- 
ious ethical  codes  are  all  at  one  in  calling  that  moral 
which  is  conducive  to  a  harmonious  social  conduct. 
Now,  everybody  knows,  that  people  do  not  stand  still 
like  mountains,  but  meet  each  other  and  move  ahead 
with  one  another.  They  also  progress  in  their  social  re- 
lations. Society  grows  by  degrees  in  volume  and  in- 
terdependence. The  power  and  development  of  men 
grows  in  the  same  degree  as  their  social  relations  be- 
come more  intimate,  as  their  sense  of  solidarity  gains  in 
strength  and  the  more  they  consciously  advance  their 
personal  well-being  by  furthering  that  of  the  whole 
community.  The  principle  of  morality  is  the  principle 
of  human  association,  and  the  principle  of  human  as- 
sociation is  progress.  Social-democracy  is  nothing  else, 
and  desires  nothing  else,  but  social  and  co-operative 
progress,  and  that  is  the  true  moral  perfection. 

One  cannot  too  often  repeat  the  fact,  and  you,  com- 
rades, are  quite  aware  of  it,  how  shamefully  certain 
words  are  abused,  especially  "  morality  "  and  "  progress." 
The  so-called  progressives,  who  are  crafty  and  cowardly 
enough  to  dabble  all  their  life  in  politics  and  to  ignore 
all  social  evils,  have  long  been  regarded  by  us  as  part 
and  parcel  of  the  "  reactionary  mass."  Progress  of  that 
kind  is  just  the  opposite  to  morality.  By  calling  ret- 
rogression "  progress,"  and  anti-social  selfishness 
"  morality,"  they  corrupt  the  language  and  notions  of 
the  people.  And  they  don't  do  it  unconsciously  either. 
It  is  a  part  of  a  deep  scheme  laid  with  deliberation  by 
wicked  immorality.  Whenever  morality  demands  free- 
dom, freedom  of  expression,  freedom  of  press,  etc.,  or 
whenever  human  evolution  demands  any  other  con- 


ETHICS   OF    SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  l6/ 

cession,  you  will  soon  find  certain  people  busy  with 
castrating  these  ideals  and  pawning  such  gags,  under  the 
name  of  freedom,  off  on  the  public.  Democracy  wants 
universal  suffrage,  but  some  Napoleon  or  Bismarck,  if  he 
finds  it  necessary  to  accede  to  the  democratic  request, 
takes  the  sting  out  of  it  and  presents  a  harmless  toy  to 
the  masses.  Such  have  always  and  everywhere  been  the 
ways  by  which  the  nations  are  misled.  It  is  therefore 
necessary  for  social-democracy  to  know  that  words  are 
but  names  for  ideas  and  that  ideas  have  a  flexible  mean- 
ing (in  proportion  to  the  scope,  interrelation,  time  and 
place  of  the  things  they  are  based  upon.  Editor).  The 
usual  misunderstandings  of  this  logical  chapter  are  taken 
advantage  of  by  our  oppressors  to  juggle  with  words, 
ideas  and  things  and  to  delude  the  people.  Else  it  would 
be  quite  incomprehensible  how  such  a  natural  thing  as 
morality  can  be  presented  by  our  academic  quacks  as  a 
metaphysical  wonder ! 

In  order  to  get  a  clear  conception  of  morality  let  us 
compare  it  with  a  tool.  The  tool  is  as  eternal  and  yet 
as  changeable  as  morality.  Can  a  knife  of  the  stone 
period  be  regarded  to-day  as  a  knife?  It  is  surely  an 
antiquated  knife,  but  no  more  a  knife  in  the  modern 
sense;  a  knife  of  to-day  must  be  from  steel,  and  of 
modern  finish.  But  just  as  a  knife  consists  generally 
of  a  handle  and  blade,  so  is  morality  in  general  the 
subordination  of  personal  desires  to  the  local,  national 
and,  finally,  international  welfare.  Thou  shalt  subor- 
dinate thy  immediate  passions  to  general  health  and  life, 
thy  personal  needs  to  the  need  of  society  —  that  is 
moral,  reasonable  and  necessary.  Whatever  social  wel- 
fare temporarily  requires,  is  stipulated  by  some  law. 
The  ethical  theory  of  social-democracy  is  in  accord  with 
the  real  state  of  things.  We  see  in  the  political  admin- 


l68  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

istration  of  the  nation  the  guardian  of  morality,  but 
we  regard  it  also  as  our  duty  to  be  vigilant  and  to  pre- 
vent the  government  turning  a  changeable  and  transient 
institution  like  the  state  into  an  eternal  and  holy  idol,  or 
promoting  immoral  reaction  instead  of  moral  progress, 
and  selfish  vice  instead  of  communistic  morality.  ( By 
subordinating  private  interests  to  the  commonwealth, l 
social-democracy  manifests  the  sense  of  true  and  genuine 
morality. 

"  The  words,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  are  no  more  mas- 
terless,  and  to  lend  them  a  different  meaning  from  that 
they  had  until  now,  is  simply  an  abuse."  In  colloquial 
use  the  word  morality  stands  for  an  empirical  and  live 
fact,  for  a  real,  palpable  need  whose  cry  is :  "  To  live 
and  let  live."  Morality  belongs  to  the  same  category 
with  all  other  profane  things.  It  is  a  natural  quality 
inherent  in  man.  Human  beings  without  any  moral 
sense  are  rare  exceptions,  which,  when  met  with,  are 
to  be  contemplated  with  the  same  judicious  mental  at- 
titude as  some  other  anthropological  or  physiological  ab- 
normities. According  to  recent  researches  in  the  domain 
of  natural  science  "  the  image  of  God "  is  a  product 
which  with  its  hair,  with  its  body  and  soul,  with  its 
religion  and  morality,  descended  from  the  animal  king- 
dom. "  As  far  as  I  am  concerned,"  says  Darwin,  "  I  am 
as  willing  to  derive  my  descent  from  that  heroic  little  ape 
which  defies  its  dangerous  foe  in  order  to  save  the  life 
of  its  guardian,  or  from  that  old  baboon  which,  coming 
down  from  the  hills,  victoriously  takes  away  its  young 
comrades  from  the  amazed  dogs  —  as  from  a  savage  who 
finds  pleasure  in  torturing  his  enemies,  offers  up  sanguin- 
ary sacrifices,  commits  child  murder  without  any  com- 
punction, treats  his  wives  as  slaves,  knows  no  decency 

1  Of  course  in  conscious  furtherance  of   the  personal   interests. —  EDITOR. 


ETHICS   OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY  169 

and  is  controlled  by  the  grossest  superstition."  And  in- 
deed, my  friends,  it  is  more  praiseworthy  to  work  oneself 
up  from  brutality  to  the  social-democratic  ideal  than  to 
sink  from  a  heaven-born  Adam  to  the  Christian  worm, 
who,  conscious  of  his  sinful  nonentity,  creeps  in  the  dust 
of  humility. 

Progress  is  moral,  and  morality  is  progressive.  As 
all  other  things  in  the  world,  morality  is  in  constant 
evolution.  It  begins  its  existence  with  the  animal,  but 
does  not  win  the  name  until  it  has  grown  in  man.  Fit- 
ness and  efficiency,  that  is  morality  and  virtue  in  the  life 
of  our  species  must,  as  everything  else,  struggle  for  ex- 
istence against  arrant  reaction.  Worthless  survivals  are 
known  in  biology  as  rudiments,  they  are  reactions  of  a 
past  generation  upon  their  posterity.  We  came  to  know 
the  same  reactionary  element  as  the  vicious  enemy  of 
historic  evolution.  Just  as  there  are  men  who  move 
their  scalp  monkey-like  or  their  ears  mule-like,  so  are 
there  brutal  progressives  with  an  atavistic  morality. 

It  is  well  known  that  one  progressive  reform  super- 
sedes the  other :  true  progress  is  therefore  the  radical,  the 
farthest-reaching  progress.  Truly  moral  is  only  the  most 
intimate  and  altruistic  social  organization.  That  the  big 
is  small  in  relation  to  the  bigger,  the  small  is  big  in 
relation  to  the  smaller;  that  what  is  a  heavy  burden  to 
man  is  an  easy  thing  to  the  ass  —  the  relativity  of  qual- 
ities big,  small,  heavy,  etc.,  is  generally  acknowledged. 
None  the  less  I  think  it  necessary  to  draw  special  at- 
tention to  the  relativity  of  the  moral  adjective.  It  hap- 
pens with  moral  laws  as  with  tools.  In  the  course  of 
time  the  cunningly  contrived  tools  come  to  be  regarded  as 
ridiculously  clumsy;  and  what  was  once  moral  becomes 
in  the  course  of  evolution  immoral.  Compared  with 
socialistic  morality,  bourgeois  morality  is  an  immoral 


I7O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

disgrace.  Morality  thus  demands  radical  progress  or  an 
unbroken  series  of  revolutions. 

With  the  final  triumph  of  social-democracy,  human 
culture  will  start  on  its  road  of  conscious  and  endless 
progress.  Until  now  mankind  advanced  in  a  more  or 
less  unconscious  manner.  It  is  only  we  social-demo- 
crats who  deliberately  put  the  principle  of  progress  to 
the  front.  Until  now  all  progressive  parties  had  de- 
fined limits  which,  when  once  reached,  checked  their 
movement  and  turned  action  into  reaction.  The  greatest 
heroes  of  civilization  and  thought  finished  by  clogging 
the  wheel  of  progress  which  they  had  once  accelerated. 
Moses,  Aristotle,  Christ,  Luther,  Kant  and  Hegel  had 
a  most  beneficial  effect  on  the  course  of  history  until 
they  became  saints.  Then  all  their  celebrated  systems 
turned  into  as  many  stumbling  blocks.  Of  course,  our 
wiseacres  have  a  ready  answer  to  that.  They  assert  that 
those  men  of  light  and  leading  have  been  misunder- 
stood by  humanity  which  corrupted  their  teachings.  But 
as  true  progressives  we  know  better.  Those  heroes 
could  not  have  a  permanent  influence,  because  they  had 
not  penetrated  to  the  true  principle  of  morality.  They 
mistook  the  particular  for  the  general,  and  morals  for 
morality.  All  ethical  prescriptions  are  good,  but  in  a  lim- 
ited sense.  Only  the  limitless  progress  is  always  good 
and  absolutely  moral.  To  lay  down  regulations  for  all 
times  and  conditions,  as  our  system  makers  claimed  to 
have  done,  is  in  the  highest  degree  immoral. 

We  have  seen  that  morality  is  based  upon  the  general 
need  for  social  co-operation.  With  the  growth  of  that 
need,  morality  and  civilization  grow.  The  continued  de- 
velopment of  morality  is  as  necessary  to  the  welfare  of 
our  race  as  food  for  the  body.  Any  moral  prescription 
which  claims  to  be  more  than  a  local  or  temporary  ex- 


ETHICS  OF   SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  I/I 

pediency  turns  necessarily  into  an  immoral  limitation,  just 
as  a  prescribed  bill  of  fare  turns  finally  into  an  unbear- 
able diet.  As  bread  is  a  general  food,  so  is  truth  a 
general  virtue.  But  remember,  my  friends,  that  that  fact 
is  by  no  means  a  metaphysical  prescription  with  a  claim 
to  eternal  validity,  but  an  empirical  rule  which  admits 
of  exceptions.  An  absolute  right  is,  like  an  absolute 
truth,  theological  or  metaphysical  moonshine.  The  moral 
world  has  but  one  commandment :  permanent  social 
progress,  limitless  social  evolution. 

Christian  irrationality,  which  separates  the  soul  from 
the  body,  separates  also  the  moral  from  the  physical 
progress.  It  removes  morality  from  the  sphere  of  life 
and  action  into  the  narrow  closet  of  feeling,  into  the 
secret  chamber  of  the  heart.  No  doubt,  a  good  heart 
is  one  of  the  conditions  of  sociability,  but  that  is  formed 
in  human  intercourse,  in  society,  and  not  in  a  monastery. 
Although  nobody  goes  now  into  the  solitude  of  the  forest 
to  live  on  roots  and  herbs  in  order  to  get  a  moral  educa- 
tion, yet  the  monastic  principle  of  morality  is  still  prev- 
alent. Where  the  universe  is  believed  to  have  sprung 
from  God's  head,  and  the  truth  from  pure  reason,  or 
kindness  and  justice  from  the  inner  voice  of  the  heart, 
there  the  wrong  path  of  ideological  deduction  is  still 
trodden.  The  undue  separation  of  the  moral  from  the 
corporeal  and  of  mental  culture  from  material  well-being 
is  a  theory  which  appears  to  be  especially  made  for  the 
benefit  of  the  exploiters  of  the  people.  The  bitter  toil 
of  the  people  is  to  be  sweetened  by  moral  sugar.  The 
ruling  classes,  while  praising  misery,  sorrow  and  pain 
as  a  moral  crucible,  are  giving  themselves  the  immoral 
pleasure  of  the  separated  progress  of  their  body.  We 
social-democrats,  though  distinguishing  things  and  con- 
ditions by  names  and  conceptions,  are  quite  aware  that 


1/2  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

in  practice  all  things  merge  into  one  another,  especially 
the  physical  and  the  moral. 

Spiritualistic  as  the  language  of  the  monks  was,  serf- 
dom, tithes  and  charity  were  the  material  support  of  their 
moral  twaddle.  The  same  tune,  though  with  some  varia- 
tion, is  played  by  our  capitalists.  They  know  the  hard- 
ships in  the  life  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  but  refuse  to  know 
how  their  private  wealth  has  been  got  out  of  social 
labor.  Their  interest  prevents  their  seeing  how  deeply 
immoral  or  unsocial  an  economic  system  is  which  pays 
the  "  neighbor "  a  disproportionally  small  share  of  the 
product  he  created  by  an  excessive  amount  of  dire 
work. 

Exact,  inductive  science  teaches  the  social-democrat 
that  the  moral  world  or  the  brotherly  progress  is  still  a 
socialist  scheme,  though  at  the  same  time  a  categorical 
imperative  which  impels  him  to  work  on  unswervingly 
and  with  all  the  moral  earnestness  at  his  command  for 
a  radical  transformation  of  political  economy.  No  par- 
son and  no  professor  shall  talk  us  out  of  that. 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY 

SEVEN  CHAPTERS 

(VOLKSSTAAT,    1876) 

I. 

It  is  with  pride  and  joy  that  our  comrades  look  upon 
the  successes  achieved  in  a  comparatively  short  time  in 
the  cause  of  Socialism.  The  numerous  adherents,  the 
large  concourse  we  owe,  I  think,  to  the  sense  of  degrada- 
tion and  misery  which  burns  in  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
But  the  splendid  discipline,  the  never-failing  tact  and  the 
harmonious  working  of  the  rank  and  file  we  must  ascribe 
to  the  clear  grasp  and  the  systematic  comprehension  of 
our  theory.  Without  that  the  socialist  would  be  to-day 
what  he  was  heretofore:  tender-hearted,  but  muddle- 
headed. 

The  first  English  and  French  socialists  whose 
thoughts  flashed  through  the  horizon  of  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  were  not  slow  in  recognizing  the 
exploiting  and  antagonistic  character  of  our  champions 
of  "  free  property."  They  saw  the  negative  element,  the 
taint  of  the  deadly  disease,  within  the  heart  of  the  factory 
system.  They  foretold  with  ingenious  lucidity  the  decay 
of  the  middle-class,  the  slow,  but  inevitable  divorce  of 
the  peasantry  and  the  artisans  from  their  means  of  pro- 
duction, the  transformation  of  the  small  producers  into 
of  the  number  of  the  proletarian  class.  But  they  failed 
wage-slaves,  finally  the  rapid  increase  of  misery  and 

173 


174  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

to  recognize  that  the  elements  of  the  positive  remedy 
are  to  be  found  in  the  laws  underlying  economic  de- 
velopments, and  that  human  history  in  its  evolution  does 
not  only  bring  forth  problems,  but  organically  contains 
their  solution.  In  their  purely  ideological  conception  of 
the  world  they  believed  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  invent 
some  scheme  for  the  building  up  of  a  true  and  just 
society.  This  error  of  judgment  could  not  but  lead  to 
day-dreaming.  Every  one  of  these  amiable  dreamers 
looked  for  proselytes  and  went  with  them  to  America  or 
Icaria.  One  built  up  a  Harmony,  the  other  a  New 
Jerusalem.  There  were  as  many  sects  as  ingenious 
minds  to  found  them.  They  exhausted  themselves  in  dis- 
cussing Republic  and  Monarchy,  dictatorial  or  constitu- 
tional government,  limited  or  universal  suffrage,  and  all 
the  intermediate  forms  of  government.  They  brandished 
all  manner  of  flags,  two-  and  three-colored,  blue  and 
red  ones.  However,  for  logical  sequence,  scientific  con- 
sistency and  harmonious  action,  one  searched  in  vain. 

Amidst  this  chaotic  state  of  social  and  political  specu- 
lation appeared  Marx  and  Engels  who,  besides  their 
warm  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  people  and  to  social- 
ism, possessed  the  necessary  philosophic  knowledge  to 
clear  social  science  of  vague  guessings  and  imaginings 
and  to  give  it  a  body  of  positive  doctrines.  Philosophy 
revealed  to  them  the  basic  principle  that,  in  the  last  resort, 
the  world  is  not  governed  by  Ideas,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  Ideas  by  the  material  world.  They  agreed 
that  the  proper  forms  of  government  and  social  institu- 
tions are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  the  inner  recesses  of  the 
mind,  but  must  be  found  through  the  investigation  into 
the  material  conditions  of  a  given  period.  The  materials 
for  socialist  investigations  are  supplied  by  the  existing 
capitalist  society  with  its  political  economy  as  the  pal- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  175 

pable  body  whch  consumes  and  produces  concrete  com- 
modities. 

In  his  "  Capital,"  Marx  dissected  that  body  and  ex- 
posed clearly  how  our  social  misery  is  the  necessary 
result  of  an  economic  system  whose  plentiful  produc- 
tion by  social  labor  stands  in  glaring  contradiction  to  its 
mode  of  private  usurpation.  The  small  number  of  em- 
ployers and  their  set  receive  as  interest,  rent,  dividend, 
etc.,  the  whole  profit,  while  the  workmen  receive  a  wage, 
a  kind  of  lubricant  to  keep  the  social  machinery  going. 
Marx  was  the  first  to  recognize  that,  on  the  whole, 
human  welfare  does  not  depend  on  the  enlightened 
statesman,  but  on  the  productivity  of  social  labor.  He 
recognized  that  the  productive  forces  and  the  efficiency 
of  society  are  by  the  nature  of  things  impelled  to  ex- 
pand, that  this  expansion  led  us  from  barbarism  to 
civilization,  that  the  progress  of  economic  productivity 
must  necessarily  lead  us  out  of  the  glaring  contradic- 
tions of  civilization  to  the  socialist  state,  to  communist 
liberty,  equality  and  fraternity.  He  recognized  —  and 
this  recognition  is  the  bed-rock  of  social  science  —  that 
human  salvation  depends  on  material  work  and  not  on 
spiritualist  moonshine.  Henceforward  we  look  for  sal- 
vation not  to  religious,  political  and  judicial  enlighten- 
ment, but  we  see  it  organically  growing  out  of  the  de- 
velopment of  social  economy.  Science  or  education  can- 
not bring  it ;  productive  labor  must  do  it,  which,  through 
science  and  education,  can  be  made  more  productive. 

To  which  does  the  primacy  belong;  to  mechanical 
work,  or  to  mental  speculation  ?  That's  the  question.  At 
the  first  sight  it  might  appear  to  be  a  scholastic  conun- 
drum; yet,  for  the  purpose  of  gaining  a  clear  mental 
vision,  it  is  of  vital  importance  to  solve  it.  The  question 
is,  indeed,  an  old  one;  who  is  right,  the  idealist  or  the 


176  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

materialist ;  but  now  the  question  has  been  so  far  cleared 
up  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  answer.  We, 
of  course,  are  materialists  and  thus  acknowledge  the 
material  factors  to  have  the  primacy.  Our  opponents 
brand  us,  therefore,  as  enemies  of  culture.  In  reality 
we  are  only  opponents  of  those  dreamers  who  divorce 
scientific  training  from  material  work,  making  out  of 
the  former  something  supernatural  which  transcends 
all  laws  of  mechanics.  Science  and  education  are  in  our 
eyes  very  valuable  means,  but  means  only,  while  the 
productivity  of  labor  is  the  higher  end.  It  is  in  the 
first  instance  the  necessity  for  an  ever  increasing  product- 
ivity of  labor  which  forms  the  real  impulse  of  scientific 
investigation  and  progress.  In  the  second  instance,  of 
course,  science  reacts  most  beneficially  on  the  method 
of  labor. 

Yet  the  question  as  to  where  the  primacy  belongs 
has  a  more  comprehensive  meaning.  It  involves  the 
cardinal  problem,  is  the  world  "  created  "  by  some  mon- 
strous, transcendental  schemer,  or  is  our  scheming, 
though  no  doubt  of  considerable  importance  to  us,  quite 
a  secondary  attribute  of  the  monstrous  every-day  world ; 
we  want  to  know  which  takes  the  precedence:  thought 
or  being,  speculative  theology  or  inductive  science.  Men 
are,  and  have  a  right  to  be,  proud  of  their  intellect,  but 
it  is  puerile  to  give  to  a  thing,  which  appears  to  them  of 
primary  importance,  the  primacy  of  the  world.  Idealists 
we  call  those  who  exaggerate,  idolize  the  worth  of  human 
understanding,  turning  it  into  a  religious  or  metaphysical 
hanky-panky.  This  school  is  on  the  decrease,  its  last  sur- 
vivals are  those  who  have  long  ago  given  up  all  religious 
superstitions,  but  somehow  stick  to  the  "  belief "  that 
conceptions  of  freedom,  justice,  beauty,  etc.,  are  shaping 
human  destiny.  To  be  sure,  there  is  a  certain  truth  in 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  177 

that ;  (but  in  the  first  instance  it  is  the  material  world 
which  forms  the  substance  of  our  conceptions,  which  de- 
termines what  is  meant  by  freedom,  justice,  etc.  It  is, 
as  we  have  said  before,  of  vital  importance  that  we 
should  be  clear  about  that,  for  on  it  depends  the  method 
of  giving  our  conceptions  the  proper  meaning.  Indeed, 
the  question  as  to  which  is  primary,  mind  or  matter,  con- 
tains also  the  problem  as  to  the  right  way  to  justice 
and  truth. 

Impelled  by  material  necessity,  Socialists  look  for  the 
salvation  of  humanity.  Philosophic  thought  based  on 
facts  has  given  us  the  guide.  We  find  salvation  not  in 
idealistic  shuffling,  but  in  the  material  production.  If 
the  nature  of  things  demands  that  we  should  get  the 
maximum  of  result  in  the  minimum  of  time,  then  we 
must  work  as  bourgeois  society  does :  with  colossal  ma- 
chinery and  for  a  large  public.  The  small  workshop  and 
the  small  holding  must  go.  The  great  capitals  shall 
flourish.  That's  the  work  of  our  liberals,  and  they  have 
done  it  so  well,  that  our  Empire,  our  "  free  "  institutions, 
our  parliamentary  talking  shop,  our  party  discussions 
about  free  trade  and  protection,  our  no-popery-struggles 
and  other  Bismarckian  tricks  are  no  more  able  to  mas- 
ter it. 

The  productivity  of  labor  has  become  so  prodigious 
that  all  the  legal  and  economic  forms  have  become  inade- 
quate. The  result  is  a  series  of  crises  with  its  usual 
symptoms:  financial  panics,  bank  failures,  shutting  up 
of  factories,  and  unemployment  in  the  ranks  of  the  work- 
ing class.  Why?  Because  the  productive  forces  have 
outgrown  the  miserable  relation  between  capital  and 
labor.  Under  such  conditions  the  minority  are  able  to 
live  in  luxury,  while  the  majority  are  deprived  of  the 
necessaries  of  life.  But  the  number  of  spendthrifts  are 


178  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

too  small  and  the  stock  is  so  embarrassingly  great  that 
capital  cannot  be  profitably  employed.  Business  is  at  a 
standstill,  and  there  is  no  demand  for  goods.  The  only 
way  out  of  this  calamity  is  participation  of  the  masses 
in  the  consumption;  the  wages  must  be  increased  and 
labor  time  reduced.  But  the  well-fed  capitalist,  though 
in  danger  of  suffocating  in  his  own  fat,  is  too  narrow- 
minded  to  pay  the  producer  of  his  wealth,  the  worker, 
well  and  to  keep  him  in  steady  employment.  Our  Lib- 
erals refuse  even  a  liberal  lubricant  for  human  labor- 
power. 

However,  circumstances  are  stronger  than  the  selfish 
will  of  the  bourgeois.  The  stock  is  gradually  sold,  busi- 
ness revives,  the  old  cycle  of  fraudulent  booming  begins 
again  and  the  wages  go  up.  What  a  strange,  paradoxical 
thing  this  bourgeois  world  is :  the  more  plentiful  the 
supply  the  greater  the  misery.  One  should  think  men 
live  on  bread.  But  no.  Let  the  soil  yield  thrice  as  much, 
as  long  as  you  don't  work  an  overlong  day,  you  will 
starve.  Should  the  goblins  of  the  fairy  tale  return  and  do 
all  our  work  during  the  night,  nine-tenths  of  the  nation 
would  have  either  to  starve  or  to  make  a  revolution.  In 
the  past  the  lack  of  capital  made  thrift  a  virtue.  The 
increase  of  the  wealth  of  the  nation  increased  also  the 
means  of  employment  and  thereby  the  sources  of  life  of 
the  people.  For,  as  it  was  said  before,  the  people  have 
not  in  the  first  instance  been  living  on  bread,  but  on 
labor.  But  now  with  the  increased  capital  the  productiv- 
ity has  reached  such  a  degree  that  there  is  not  sufficient 
employment.  Then  the  superfluity  engenders  misery. 
Not  only  Social-democracy,  but  the  national  economics 
demand  a  larger  consumption,  a  wider  market  for  its 
products.  Even  an  increase  of  wages  and  a  reduction 
of  the  labor  time  are  no  more  than  palliatives.  As  the 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  I7Q 

productive  forces  in  the  past  needed  for  their  fuller  de- 
velopment the  abolition  of  serfdom  and  of  restraint  of 
trade,  in  short,  demanded  the  liberal  bourgeois  policy, 
so  do  they  demand  to-day  the  abolition  of  the  capitalist 
mode  of  wage-labor  and  its  substitution  by  the  Socialist 
organization  of  communistic  labor. 

The  subjective  creed  breaks  up  into  different  denomi- 
nations —  and  the  various  parsons  are  at  loggerheads. 
Objective  science  is  unanimous;  engineers  don't  quarrel 
about  principles  of  mechanics.  The  theoretical  unanim- 
ity of  Social-democracy,  which  we  mentioned  before,  pro- 
ceeds from  the  fact  that  we  don't  look  for  salvation  in 
subjective  schemes,  but  we  see  it  growing  as  a  sort  of 
organic  product  out  of  the  inevitable  course  of  actual 
development.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  facilitate  its 
birth.  The  irresistible  evolutionary  process,  which 
formed  the  planets,  and  hardened  molten  matter  into 
crystals,  and  brought  forth  in  succession  plants,  ani- 
mals and  men,  is  also  tending  irresistibly  towards  a  ra- 
tional application  of  labor  and  towards  an  uninterrupted 
development  of  the  productive  forces.  It  is  imperative 
that  production  be  rationally  managed  under  all  cir- 
cumstances. In  all  periods  of  civilization,  no  matter  how 
greatly  they  differed  from  one  another,  it  was  essential 
—  and  such  is  the  logic  of  things  —  to  achieve  the  maxi- 
mum of  results  with  the  minimum  of  effort.  This  instinct 
produced  by  our  physical  constitution  and  need,  is  the 
universal,  the  primary  cause  and  the  foundation  of  all  so- 
called  higher,  spiritual  developments  and  progressive 
movements.  The  unfolding  of  the  productive  forces  is 
the  point  of  departure,  the  formative  factor  which  builds 
up  states,  determines  forms  of  governments,  creates  par- 
ties, and  clears  up  and  perfects  the  notions  of  liberty  and 
justice.  The  productive  forces,  having  been  impeded  in 


l8o  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

their  development  by  guild  regulations,  broke  those 
medieval  fetters,  and  created  the  capitalist  system  which, 
in  its  turn,  is  rapidly  becoming  a  hindrance  to  the  further 
development  of  production.  Therefore  it  is  necessary  to 
allow  the  people  to  take  their  historically-due  part  in  the 
consumption  and  to  extend  the  demand  for  goods.  The 
old  system  must  go  in  order  to  bring  morality,  liberty, 
equality  and  fraternity  to  a  more  perfect  state.  Forward! 
is  our  watchword,  whether  we  like  it  or  not. 

The  hope  of  Social-Democracy  is  based  on  the  organic 
necessity  of  progress.  We  do  not  depend  on  the  good 
will  of  any  man.  Our  principle  is  organic,  our  philoso- 
phy materialistic,  but  our  materialism  is  richer  in  es- 
sence and  more  positive  than  any  of  its  predecessors.  It 
absorbed  the  Idea,  the  antagonism  of  matter,  it  mastered 
the  domain  of  Reason,  and  overcame  the  antagonism  be- 
tween the  mechanical  and  spiritual  view  of  life.  The 
spirit  of  negation  is  with  us  at  the  same  time  positive, 
our  element  is  dialectical.  "  Once  my  work  on  Economics 
finished,"  wrote  Marx  to  me  privately,  "  I  shall  write  a 
Dialectics.  The  laws  of  Dialectics  have  been  formulated 
by  Hegel,  though  in  mystical  form.  What  we  have  to  do 
is  to  strip  it  of  that  form."  Being  afraid  it  might  be 
long  before  Marx  could  undertake  such  a  work,  and  hav- 
ing since  my  youth  independently  thought  a  good  deal 
on  that  subject,  I  shall  try  to  throw  some  light  on  dia- 
lectical philosophy.  It  is  in  my  opinion  the  central 
sun  from  whom  light  goes  forth  to  illuminate  not  only 
Political  Economy,  but  the  whole  course  of  human  devel- 
opment, and  it  will  finally,  I  expect,  penetrate  to  the 
"  final  cause  "  of  all  science. 

The  comrades  know  that  I  am  not  an  academician,  but 
a  simple  tanner  who  learned  Philosophy  by  himself.  To 
its  exposition  I  can  but  devote  my  hours  of  leisure.  I 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  l8l 

shall  therefore  publish  my  articles  at  shorter  or  longer 
intervals,  whereby  it  will  be  my  endeavor  rather  to 
make  each  article  readable  for  itself  than  to  write  a  book 
with  chapters  depending  upon  each  other.  And  not  at- 
taching much  importance  to  the  learned  phraseology,  it 
will  be  easier  for  me  to  avoid  unessential  matter  and 
unnecessary  flourishes  which  only  tend  to  obscure  the 
subject.  On  the  other  hand,  I  must  ask  the  reader  to 
bear  in  mind  that  the  art  of  popular  and  easy  exposition 
has  its  limits.  To  be  sure,  what  one  thinks  out  clearly, 
one  can  express  clearly.  But  that  truth  is  relative.  With- 
out some  preliminary  knowledge  of  a  subject  it  is  im- 
possible to  talk  about  it.  The  peasant  is  made  fun  of 
on  the  sea ;  he  knows  nothing  of  hawsers,  square-rigs  and 
sails,  and  the  sailor  cannot  speak  of  his  business  to  him. 
Neither  could  I  enter  into  a  philosophic  discussion  without 
taking  some  preliminaries  as  granted,  else  I  could  not 
help  falling  into  platitudes  which  would  neither  serve  my 
purpose  nor  satisfy  my  taste.  Any  reader  who,  in  the 
course  of  my  articles,  might  complain  about  obscure  writ- 
ing, would  therefore  do  well  to  search  first  for  light 
within  himself. 

II. 

Like  my  sermons,  which  were  preached  with  the  inten- 
tion of  desecrating  the  pulpit,  my  exposition  of  Philos- 
ophy has  the  intention  of  degrading  that  high  mistress 
which,  as  Ludwig  Feuerbach  stated,  is  the  devotee  and 
sister  of  Theology.  Social-democracy  will  get  those  old 
spinsters  out  of  the  way.  As  far  back  as  1844  Frederick 
Engels  spoke  in  the  preface  to  his  "  Condition  of  the 
Working  Gass  in  England  "  of  the  end  Feuerbach  put 
to  all  philosophy.  But  Feuerbach  was  so  intensely  occu- 
pied with  the  theological  devotee  that  he  had  very  little 


I&2  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

time  and  mental  energy  left  to  join  issue  with  the  other 
sister,  the  philosophical  one.  His  final  solution  of  phil- 
osophy is  more  implicit  than  explicit.  Yet  this  disciple 
of  Hegel  proves  indirectly  the  truth  of  Marx's  word: 
"  The  true  laws  of  Dialectics  are  to  be  found  in  Hegel, 
though  only  in  a  mystical  form."  Feuerbach  and  Marx, 
both  Hegelians,  arrived  at  the  same  result  by  the  same 
method  which  Feuerbach  made  use  of  in  his  analysis 
of  religion,  and  Marx  in  his  analysis  of  social  economy. 

This  historic  course  proves  that  our  social-democratic 
anti-philosophy  is  the  legitimate  descendant  of  Philoso- 
phy. Owing  to  this  descent  we  may  place  it  right  next 
to  that  of  our  academicians  and  overtopping  them  by  one 
length,  we  may  ask  them :  What  do  you  still  want  ? 
And  when  it  comes  to  the  subject-matter  itself  and  its 
proofs,  we  are  so  sure  of  our  case  that  we  safely  may 
look  from  up  high  down  on  these  learned  gentlemen. 
For  us  there  is  no  need  to  appeal  to  Aristotle  or  Kant, 
because  we  deal  with  a  living  thing  which  is  patent  to 
all  unprejudiced  and  unbiased  minds.  Just  as  the  proof 
of  scientific  laws  is  to  be  found  in  the  experiment,  so 
are  our  arguments  in  conformity  with  fact  which  is  the 
basis  of  our  anti-philosophic  philosophy.  Therefore,  it 
is  superfluous  to  corroborate  our  arguments  by  extracts 
from  Greek,  Latin  or  other  learned  authors. 

It  may  be  somewhat  puzzling  to  the  uninitiated  to  find 
that,  while  professing  the  intention  of  disparaging  philos- 
ophy, we  are  proud  of  our  philosophic  descent.  Yet  the 
contradiction  is  easily  explained :  As  the  alchemistic 
errors  generated  modern  chemistry,  so  have  the  errors  of 
Philosophy  generated  a  Universal  Doctrine  of  Knowledge 
and  Science.  An  old  man  who  desires  to  be  able  to  start 
his  life  again,  does  not  mean  to  repeat  it,  but  to  improve  it. 
He  recognizes  the  ways  he  has  walked  as  wrong  ones, 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  183 

yet  he  cannot  withhold  the  seemingly  contradictory  ac- 
knowledgment that  they  brought  him  wisdom.  The  crit- 
ical attitude  taken  up  by  the  old  man  towards  his  past  is 
just  the  attitude  of  social-democracy  towards  philosophy. 
It  was  necessary  to  struggle  through  the  wrong  path  in 
order  to  attain  to  the  knowledge  of  the  right  one.  Now, 
in  order  to  be  able  to  follow  up  the  right  way  without 
being  misled  by  any  religious  or  philosophical  maze,  ,it  is 
necessary  to  study  the  most  mistaken  of  all  mistaken 
ways,  namely  Philosophy. 

Those  who  take  this  advice  literally  will  surely  think 
it  absurd.  For,  how  could  the  wrong  path  lead  to  truth  ? 
But  the  reader  would  do  well  not  to  stick  to  the  letter 
but  to  seek  the  sense  of  it.  The  famous  dictum :  "  My 
religion  is  no-religion  "  illustrates  for  instance  that  not 
always  is  a  a,  but  that  a  turns  into  b.  It  is  the  peculiar 
character  of  the  things  of  this  world  that  they  are  not 
crystallized  or  fossilized,  but  they  are  in  an  eternal  flux, 
ever  changing,  ever  in  a  process  of  transformation,  of 
rising  and  decaying.  All  reality  undergoes  constant 
changes,  and  so  limitless  is  the  movement  of  the  world 
that  every  thing  at  every  moment  is  not  the  same  thing 
that  it  was.  The  language  therefore  is  not  able  to  do 
otherwise  than  to  give  one  name  to  various  forms  or 
things.  Also  philosophy  could  not  escape  the  universal 
law  of  movement  and  mutability,  and  it  has  undergone 
such  changes  that  it  is  a  great  question  whether,  like 
modern  Christianity,  the  new  thing  should  retain  its  old 
name  for  reasons  of  expediency,  or  should  get  a  new 
name  to  match.  Social-democracy  has  decided  against 
"  religion,"  and  I  am  now  pleading  that  we  decide  against 
philosophy  too.  Only  for  the  period  of  transition  do  we 
use  the  expression  "  Social-democratic  philosophy."  In 


184  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

the  future  we  shall  probably  speak  of  dialectics  or  of  the 
general  doctrine  of  knowledge. 

Who  are  we,  where  do  we  come  from,  and  where 
do  we  go  to?  Are  men  the  lords  and  masters,  the 
"  crown  of  creation,"  or  are  they  helpless  creatures,  sub- 
jected to  wind  and  weather,  and  to  trouble  and  toil? 
What  is,  what  should  be,  our  relation  to  the  things  and 
men  about  us?  That  is  the  great  question  of  philosophy 
and  religion.  In  the  language  of  the  former,  the  younger 
sister,  that  question  is  expressed  in  a  more  rational  way. 
She  does  not  expect  the  reply  from  supernatural,  divine 
spirits,  nor  from  ecstasy,  but  puts  it  before  the  sober 
intellect  which  exists  empirically  in  the  brain.  It  is 
the  characteristic  of  philosophy  that  it  snatched  away 
this  "  great  question  "  from  religious  sentiment  and  placed 
it  before  the  organ  of  science,  the  faculty  of  knowledge, 
to  find  the  solution. 

Less  than  of  our  intestines  can  we  know,  without  special 
study,  of  that  mysterious  thing  which  as  force  of  thinking 
dwells  in  our  head.  Primitive  wisdom  used  it  as  people 
use  their  stomach,  without  scientifically  inquiring  into 
its  construction.  Having,  however,  reached  the  point 
when  men  consciously  set  before  the  intellect  the  great 
question  about  existence,  they  gradually  began  to  inquire 
into  the  intellect  itself,  and  the  critique  of  reason  or  the 
theory  of  cognition  became  the  great  question. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  object  of  the  medieval  school- 
men was  to  support  the  religious  dogmas  by  rational  ar- 
guments. They  did  something  that  they  didn't  intend 
to  do:  they  put  reason  above  religion;  they  practically 
made  reason  the  supreme  being.  Something  like  it  oc- 
curred to  Philosophy.  She  proposed  to  solve  the  great 
question  of  general  existence  scientifically,  but  not  know- 
ing how  to  take  it  in  hand,  she  turned  it  upside  down, 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  185 

and  the  scientific  solution  of  the  process  of  thinking, 
the  theory  of  cognition,  became  to  her  the  real  and  funda- 
mental question.  The  most  remarkable  philosophical 
works,  especially  the  most  recent,  prove,  though  uncon- 
scious to  their  authors,  that  change  of  procedure.  Even 
the  title  of  the  principal  works,  from  Bacon's  "  Organon  " 
to  Hegel's  "  Logic "  and  Schopenhauer's  "  Quadruple 
Root  of  the  Proposition  of  the  Adequate  Reason  "  indi- 
cate at  once  the  situation. 

The  past  great  philosophers,  as  well  as  their  present 
small  successors,  could  not  help  but  acquire  more  or  less 
of  a  presentiment  of  the  fact  that  all  the  so-called 
mother  of  sciences  brings  home  from  her  excursions 
really  consists  in  no  more  than  the  special  theory  of 
cognition.  Quotations  by  the  yard  could  be  brought  to- 
gether to  prove  that  statement,  but  also  to  prove  that 
that  presentiment  did  not  arrive  at  clear  nor  consistent 
consciousness,  and  that  the  professors  and  lecturers  of 
philosophy  are  quite  confused  with  regard  to  the  prob- 
lem, the  object  and  the  significance  of  philosophy.  None 
of  them  has  been  able  to  clear  his  mind  of  the  remnants 
of  superstitions,  of  phantastic  mysticism  which  dims  their 
vision.  Irrefutable  evidence  for  this  was  given  lately 
by  Herr  von  Kirchmann,  who  in  a  "  Philosophical  lecture 
in  popular  language  "  said,  according  to  the  Volkszeitung 
of  January  13,  1876,  that  philosophy  was  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  science  of  the  highest  conception  of 
being  and  knowing.  .  .  .  With  the  special  sciences 
she  has  in  common  the  subject  of  their  inquiry  and  con- 
templation, the  Universe  with  all  that  is  in  it,  and  she 
uses  the  same  means  .  .  .  those  of  the  speculative 
thought  which  is  striving  for  a  higher  unity.  The  main 
difference  between  the  special  sciences  and  Philosophy 
consists  particularly  in  the  method,  for  the  latter  proceeds 


l86  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

from  no  given  premises  whatsoever,  but  from  a  purely 
spirit-born  principle  as  a  starting  point.  Of  her  useful- 
ness Kirchmann  didn't  wish  to  speak,  but  of  her  sig- 
nificance for  the  great  spiritual  domains  of  life,  of 
humanity  in  particular,  for  religion,  state,  family,  ethics; 
for  neither  the  courts  of  justice  nor  the  police,  but 
Philosophy  alone  was  able  to  protect  those  great  insti- 
tutions which  were  attacked  with  as  much  boldness  as 
cynicism. 

There  you  have  the  old  devotee  made  young. 

Her  name  is  "  Science  of  all  the  highest  conceptions  of 
Being  and  Knowing."  That  is  her  name  in  common  par- 
lance. But  I  should  like  to  see  that  common  sense  that 
could  make  sense  out  of  that  common  parlance.  "  The 
highest  conception  of  Being "  deals  perhaps  with  the 
conception  of  the  highest  fixed  stars,  or  is  there  still 
anywhere  a  higher  "  Being "  left  ?  But  I  take  things 
too  materially ;  we  must  remember  we  are  not  talking 
astronomy,  but  Philosophy,  or  "  Science  of  the  highest 
conceptions  of  Knowing."  How  can  that  be  materialized ; 
what  positive  sense  can  we  derive  from  that  phrase? 

Philosophy  "  has  in  common  with  the  special  sciences 
the  object  of  their  inquiry:  the  Universe  with  all  that 
is  in  it,  and  uses  the  same  means  to  her  work,  namely 
the  thought."  But  in  what  does  the  difference,  the  dis- 
tinction of  Philosophy,  consist?  Kirchmann  says,  in  the 
method.  Granted  that  Philosophy  and  natural  science 
have  the  same  object  of  inquiry  and  the  same  instrument, 
but  a  different  way  of  handling.  Now,  what  is  the  result 
of  that  difference?  The  results  of  natural  science  are 
known.  But  what  has  Philosophy  to  show  ?  Kirchmann 
tells  us  the  secret:  She  protects  religion,  state,  family 
and  morality.  Philosophy  is  not  a  science,  but  a  safe- 
guard against  Social-democracy.  Then  there  is  no  won- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  187 

der  that  Social-democrats  have  got  their  own  Philosophy. 

One  must  not  think  that  Kirchmann  was  an  excep- 
tion, and  was  no  real  philosopher.  On  the  contrary,  he 
is  a  man  of  great  reputation  and  speaks  quite  in  harmony 
with  the  Faculty.  Especially  the  dictum  about  "  pro- 
ceeding from  no  given  premises  whatsoever,"  bears  the 
hall-mark  of  the  official  Philosophy.  The  "  special 
sciences,"  as  well  as  common  sense,  get  their  knowledge 
through  the  intellect,  from  the  material  world.  They 
make  their  researches  with  open  eyes  and  ears,  and  what 
can  be  seen  and  heard  the  Philosophy  calls  "  given  prem- 
ises." In  her  extravagant  conceit  which  seeks  the  "  eter- 
nal treasure,"  she  looks  upon  the  "  appearances  "  of  the 
world  as  upon  rust-corrupted  and  moth-eaten  things. 
It  is  true  that  it  is  generally  asserted  that  she  is  based 
on  all  accessible  results  of  the  different  sciences,  but  this 
is  only  a  concession  which  she  is  compelled  to  make  — 
an  inconsistency  quite  in  keeping  with  the  general  philo- 
sophic confusion.  She  speaks  thus  with  the  left  corner 
of  the  mouth,  while  with  the  right  one  she  speaks  of 
"  the  purely  spirit-born  or  deductive  principle  to  start 
from,"  of  no  materially  preconceived  notion  whatsoever, 
which  she  is  running  after  without  ever  catching  up  with 
it.  The  whole  clap-trap  comes  really  to  this  :  Philosophy 
is  no  science  but  the  radically  false  way  used  by  the  mind. 
Its  result  is  to  be  found  in  our  inference  that  by  mind 
alone  no  truth  and  no  principle  can  be  attained,  and  no 
life  problem  can  be  solved,  but  that  the  human  faculty  of 
cognition  is  an  inductive  or  matter  of  fact  dependent  in- 
strument which  always  and  everywhere  presupposes  ex- 
perimental material. 

This  is  the  lesson  that  classical  Philosophy  teaches  us. 
Its  successors  and  epigoni  are,  for  reasons  easily  under- 
stood, not  able  to  grasp  it.  They  are  called  upon  to 


l88  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

defend  religion,  state,  family  and  morality.  As  soon  as 
they  renounce  such  calling  they  cease  to  be  philosophers 
and  become  Social-democrats.  All  those  who  call  them- 
selves philosophers,  professors,  university  lecturers,  have, 
despite  their  free-thought  pretensions,  not  yet  freed 
themselves  from  superstitition  and  mysticism;  they  are 
all  of  the  same  kidney  and  must  be  regarded,  in  the 
main,  from  the  above  social-democratic  point  of  view, 
as  a  compact  mass  of  uneducated  reactionaries. 

III. 

Whence  do  we  come,  whence  the  world,  and  where 
are  both  going  to?  What  is  the  meaning  of  existence, 
of  our  sentiments  and  of  the  natural  phenomena?  Thus 
asks  man,  and  man  is  a  great  questioner  —  that  is,  a 
great  fool.  As  the  proverb  has  it,  one  fool  can  ask 
more  questions  than  ten  wise  men  can  answer.  Yet  that 
question  is  the  cardinal  question  which  has  been  and  will 
be  put  by  all  men  at  all  times.  Foolish  is  only  the  form 
in  which  the  question  was  put  first  by  religion  and  then 
by  the  progressists,  also  called  philosophers.  They  ques- 
tioned in  a  hazy,  general  way  and  —  "  only  the  fool  waits 
for  reply." 

A  reply,  a  clear,  rational  and  positive  reply,  can  only 
be  expected  when  we  specialize  after  the  manner  of  the 
"  separate  "  sciences.  We  can  only  get  at  the  whole  by 
means  of  its  parts ;  the  Universe  can  only  be  understood 
by  climbing  up,  as  it  were,  its  particular  forms ;  we  can 
only  reach  the  general  through  the  special.  One  must 
first  ask,  where  do  I  personally  come  from?  Whence  my 
father  and  grandfather?  What  is  the  eye?  What  is  the 
ear?  What  function  have  the  liver  or  the  kidneys  to 
perform?  To  such  questions  science  replies  in  a  definite 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  189 

and  exhaustive  manner.  Botany  deals  with  trees,  shrubs 
and  herbs.  Astronomy  with  stars.  The  "  great  ques- 
tion "  thus  split  up,  specialized  and  reasonably  formu- 
lated can  be  reasonably  and  scientifically  answered.  If, 
however,  such  reply  does  not  satisfy  the  inquisitive  stu- 
dent, if  there  still  remains  something  obscure  and  unex- 
plained, we  have  none  the  less  this  advantage  over  re- 
ligion and  philosophy,  that  we  know  the  method  by  which 
we  may  proceed  with  our  questioning  and  searching  for 
a  reply,  and  we  need  not  foolishly  wait,  believe,  hope  and 
speculate. 

Thus,  the  "  method  "  is  pointed  out  to  us  to  be  the 
distinguishing  mark  between  Philosophy  and  the  special 
branches  of  science.  Now,  the  speculative  method  of 
Philosophy  is  nothing  but  a  stupid  questioning  and  grop- 
ing in  hazy  generalities.  The  philosopher,  having  no  ma- 
terial to  work  upon,  tries  to  evolve  his  speculative  wis- 
dom from  his  head  like  the  spider  its  web  from  its  hind- 
parts  !  Nay,  the  philosopher  goes  even  farther  than  that, 
he  refuses  all  material  and  given  premises.  His  philo- 
sophic fabrics  have  thus  less  of  a  real  connection  than  the 
cobwebs  of  the  spider. 

We  greatly  underestimate  the  bad  effects  of  this  abuse 
of  method  if  we  assume  that  it  does  no  harm  to  practical 
life  because  it  is  locked  up  in  those  learned  works  which 
only  few  people  care  for.  Those  learned  books  are  but 
the  most  palpable  collection  of  a  wide-spread  poison  with 
which  humanity  has  been  infected  from  the  beginning, 
and  from  which  it  is  still  suffering.  An  instructive  ex- 
ample was  given  lately  by  the  learned  Professor  Bieder- 
mann  in  Leipsic  in  his  controversy  with  the  workingmen. 
He  wanted  the  Socialists  "  to  give  him,  instead  of  vague 
and  indefinite  suggestions,  a  clear  picture  of  how  the 
future  society  must  be  organized  and  according  to  their 


IOX)  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

demands  shall  be  built  up;  especially  as  to  its  practical 
consequences." 

Before  giving  Biedermann  a  rational  answer  it  would 
be,  before  all,  necessary  to  teach  him  how  to  put  a  ques- 
tion rationally.  He  is  not  acquainted  with  the  theory  or 
the  science  of  cognition.  Therefore  he  fails  completely 
to  recognize  our  ways.  (^We  are  not  idealists  who  dream 
about  the  conditions  of  a  future  society  "  as  they  must 
be  and  ought  to  be."  When  we  are  trying  to  think  about 
the  future  society  we  first  proceed  from  the  materials  at 
hand.  We  think  as  materialists.  God  Almighty  had  the 
Universe  in  his  head  before  he  made  it;  his  ideas  were 
sovereign  and  had  no  need  to  take  notice  of  realities. 
This  superstition  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  Idea  is  still 
rooted  in  the  heads  of  the  philosophers ;  from  it  proceeds 
that  demand  that  we  should  first  project  an  elaborate  pic- 
ture in  all  its  details  of  the  future  society,  before  attack- 
ing and  "  destroying  "  the  present.  The  old  Socialists, 
Fourier,  Cabet,  etc.,  committed  that  mistake  and  we  are 
therefore  told  to  take  an  example  from  them.  Herr 
Biedermann  fails  to  understand  us,  and  our  ways  and 
our  cause.  We  don't  deal  with  the  future  in  the  way  the 
speculative  philosophers  do;  we  deal  with  it  as  prac- 
tical men.  We  don't  build  castles  in  the  air  and  don't 
count  the  chickens  before  they  are  hatched.  It  is  surely 
foolish  to  go  into  business  without  any  forethought  and 
plan,  but  it  is  still  more  foolish  and  quite  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  phantastic  enthusiasts  not  to  reserve  to  one- 
self liberty  of  action  with  regard  to  the  special  condi- 
tions as  soon  as  they  are  at  hand  —  it  is  like  a  person 
who  intends  to  deal  in  cotton  prints  and  is  quite  in  a 
hurry  to  project  its  stellular  and  flowery  figures  which 
might  please  the  customers  while  he  knows  neither  his 
customers  nor  their  taste.  We  have  surely  a  general  con- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  IQI 

ception  of  the  constitution  of  future  society,  but  we  leave 
its  details  to  the  times  and  circumstances  when  that  con- 
ception will  have  to  be  realized.^)  Our  opponents  are 
undoubtedly  entitled  to  demand  from  us  a  clear  state- 
ment of  principle,  but  they  cannot  reasonably  demand  the 
particulars  beforehand.  These  must  be  reserved  to  the 
Socialist  legislators  who  in  their  time  will  have  to  frame 
bills  for  the  legislative  bodies.  And  history  bears  out  this 
statement :  What  leader  of  the  bourgeoisie,  when  fight- 
ing against  feudalism,  would  have  been  able  to  describe 
all  those  different  and  multifarious  institutions  of  bour- 
geois society,  as  lawyers,  notaries,  mortgages,  bills  of  ex- 
change, shares,  police  and  a  hundred  other  things  which 
capitalism  has  brought  in  its  train?  The  leaders  of  the 
bourgeois  movement  of  freedom  of  trade  and  commerce, 
didn't  trouble  themselves  prematurely  with  particular 
projects;  they  simply  demanded  from  their  aristocratic 
oppressors  "  the  Rights  of  Man,"  and  they  left  meanwhile 
the  question  concerning  particulars  unanswered.  They 
reserved  to  themselves  liberty  of  action  to  meet  events  as 
circumstances  required. 

Take  care  of  the  principles  and  the  details  will  take 
care  of  themselves;  time  and  circumstances  will  bring 
them  out  with  unfailing  certainty.  Thus  acted  the  lead- 
ers of  the  bourgeoisie.  They  refused  to  weave  without 
material  thread.  And  what  all  practical  men  of  the 
past  have  done  instinctively,  we  Social-democrats  are 
doing  with  a  clear  consciousness  given  to  us  by  the  scien- 
tific method  of  cognition. 

We,  too,  demand  the  restoration  of  our  human  rights, 
and  demand  our  socially  due  portion  of  the  products  of 
labor.  This  wish  and  will  of  ours  is  no  idle  speculation, 
but  the  natural  outcome  of  present  material  wants.  And 
so  is  the  communist  economy  quite  in  harmony  with  the 


Ip2  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

nature  of  the  present  social  system ;  it  must  come ;  its 
materials  are  being  produced  and  multiplied  daily.  The 
capitalists  are  the  real  silk-worms.  As  soon  as  their  silk  in 
the  shape  of  accumulated  productive  means  is  spun  by  the 
wageworkers,  we  shall  know  how  to  take  it  in  hand  and 
weave  it.  The  premature  question  about  the  future 
When,  Where  and  How  need  not  trouble  us,  it  is  indeed 
an  idle  "  philosophic  "  speculation. 

Our  platform  demands  from  society,  by  means  of  the 
general  duty  to  work,  the  satisfaction  of  all  reasonable 
human  needs.  Our  opponents  want  us  to  elaborate 
clearly  the  "  practical  consequences  "  of  that  idea.  They 
don't  like  our  negative  and  critical  attitude.  We  should 
build  up  and  show  "  how  it  could  be  done  "  —  of  course, 
not  in  a  serious,  not  in  a  palpable  and  practical  way,  but 
on  paper,  by  means  of  harmless  theories  and  ideal  de- 
scriptions. They  fail  to  recognize  that  our  method  is  not 
purely  ideological.  In  our  real  work  we  use  our  brains 
after  the  manner  of  science,  and  not  of  idle  speculators. 
Who  wants  to  build  must  lay  the  axe  unto  the  roots  of 
the  existing  trees,  and,  before  all,  bring  down  the  tallest 
and  mightiest.  But  this  radical  cutting  work  we  must 
not  do.  We  should  construct  the  future  society  in  spirit 
only,  in  theory.  And  yet  they  want  us  to  do  this  theoret- 
ical work  in  an  exact  and  scientific  way.  Well,  let  us 
first  critically  assort  the  material  on  hand.  However,  the 
"  negation  "  of  the  unfit  is  inseparably  connected  with 
the  construction  of  the  better.  Criticism  of  the  present 
is  the  indispensable  condition  of  "  improvement." 

That  work  on  a  small  scale  is  not  profitable  and  that 
private  property  on  a  large  scale  exploits  the  workmen, 
is  an  empirical  fact ;  it  is  won  experimentally  by  induc- 
tion and  did  not  fall  into  our  heads  from  the  nebulous 
region  of  hazy  generalities.  From  that  fact  we  deduce, 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  IQ3 

as  a  "  practical  conclusion,"  the  demand  for  co-operative 
work  on  a  rational  and  communal  scale. 

Since  Adam  Smith,  and  even  earlier,  it  is  acknowledged 
that  labor,  when  applied  to  nature  which  is  obviously 
nobody's  property,  is  the  creator  of  all  capital  and  rent 
and  profit.  That  labor  is  not  carried  out  in  a  private 
way,  but  that  it  is  divided  among  the  members  of  so- 
ciety, is  as  much  a  truism  as  the  phrase  of  the  "  division 
of  labor."  That  the  division  of  labor  as  practiced  to-day, 
is  not  carried  out  in  a  systematic  manner,  but  that  it  is 
more  a  matter  of  chance  which  produces  a  glut  in  some 
articles  and  scarcity  in  other  articles  of  the  market,  more- 
over, that  the  division  of  the  produce  defies  all  justice 
and  humanity,  are  bare  facts  which  do  not  admit  of  any 
doubt.  From  all  that  we  draw  the  "  practical  conclu- 
sion," that  it  is  in  the  interest  of  the  community  to  abolish 
private  property  of  the  soil,  and  to  transfer  all  the  means 
of  production,  created  by  labor,  into  the  possession  of  the 
community,  which  will  share  out  the  duties  and  the 
rights,  the  labor  and  the  produce  of  labor,  in  an  equitable 
and  democratic  way  among  all  its  members,  according  to 
social  needs  and  irrespective  of  individual  whims. 

The  special  question  as  to  the  time,  means  and  method 
of  the  transformation,  whether  it  should  be  done  by 
means  of  a  secret  treaty  with  Bismarck,  or  by  a  petition 
to  Parliament,  or  by  a  barricade  fight  in  Paris,  or  by  fe- 
male suffrage  in  England  —  all  such  considerations  are  ex- 
travagant, untimely  and  foolish.  We  bide  our  time  and 
the  material  which  must  be  submitted  to  our  understand- 
ing before  we  can  rationally  think  the  matter  out.  Our 
cause  is  getting  clearer  every  day,  and  the  people  are 
daily  becoming  more  enlightened. 

Constant  propaganda,  the  removal  of  prejudices  of  the 
public,  untiring  criticism,  will  effect  much  more  than  all 


194  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

speculation  about  the  future  state  of  society.  Its  gen- 
eral outline  is  given  in  an  unmistakable  manner  by  the 
present  actual  nature  of  things.  The  determination  of 
its  special  forms  and  details  must  be  left  to  the  enquiries 
of  future  times. 

The  earth  is  wide,  the  sun  warm,  the  soil  fertile  and 
the  arms  of  the  people  are  now  strong  enough  to  satisfy 
all  reasonable  needs  of  the  masses,  be  they  three  times 
as  numerous  as  at  present.  But  men  like  Biedermann 
are  in  doubt  if  we  have  enough  brains  to  be  able  to  divide 
fairly  the  plentiful  products  of  labor.  He  is  especially 
anxious  to  know  "  whether  all  members  will  have  the 
same  claim  to  a  share  in  the  produce,"  that  is,  whether 
all  workingmen  will  have  only  rye  bread  for  breakfast,  or 
whether  professional  work  will  be  rewarded  with  an 
extra  roll  of  white  flour.  I  am  not  used  to  think  much  of 
my  personal  dignity,  but  such  question  I  think  unworthy 
of  a  Social-democratic  philosopher,  because  its  solution 
rests  with  the  social  needs  of  the  future  community. 

Biedermann  speaks  of  "  all  partners  of  a  labor 
product."  But  rightly  conceived,  there  is  only  one  part- 
ner, the  working  people ;  and  only  one  product,  the  work- 
ing people's  product.  Only  from  this  social  point  of 
view  is  it  possible  to  conceive  of  a  just  distribution,  while 
the  conception  of  different  partners  with  different  rights 
and  privileges  to  their  different  products  leads  only  to 
confusion  and  serves  only  those  who  want  to  fish  in 
troubled  waters.  It  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone,  says 
the  Bible.  It  is  likewise  not  good  that  he  should  work 
alone.  The  individual  as  well  as  the  small  societies 
should  join  the  whole.  Looked  at  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  whole  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  future  so- 
ciety is  clear  enough,  and  from  this  general  principle  the 
"  practical  consequences  "  will  follow  in  the  right  time 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  IQ5 

and  with  the  help  of  inductive  enquiry  quite  rationally. 

But  what  about  forced  labor  —  "  the  limitation  of  one's 
liberty  does  not  agree  with  the  ideal  state."  Well,  should 
we  evolve  the  conceptions  of  liberty  and  ideal  in  a  phan- 
tastic-speculative  way  out  of  the  pure  reason  as  the 
German  professors  do,  then,  of  course,  they  would  not 
agree  with  one  another.  We,  however,  do  not  seek  in 
metaphysics  for  freedom,  neither  do  we  look  for  it  in  the 
salvation  of  the  soul  from  the  prison  of  the  body,  but  in 
the  adequate  satisfaction  of  our  material  and  intellectual 
needs  which  are  all  of  them  perceptible  and  bodily  felt. 
Compulsion  to  labor  is,  properly  speaking,  a  law  of  Nature 
and  is  only  experienced  as  a  limitation  of  our  personal 
freedom  as  long  as  there  are  masters  over  us,  who  de- 
prive us  of  the  produce  of  our  labor.  Does  the  well- 
paid  official  consider  his  prescribed  service  as  a  "limita- 
tion of  his  personal  freedom  ?  " 

No  doubt,  the  adequate  satisfaction  of  all  rational 
needs  through  society,  that  is,  the  social-democratic  or- 
ganization of  economics,  is  a  big  problem.  Such  prob- 
lems are  not  solved  by  any  individual  personality,  but  by 
history,  by  social  evolution.  And  it  is  puerile  to  set  them 
before  any  person,  no  matter  how  ingenious,  for  solu- 
tion. We  go  to  work  in  a  practical  manner,  and  the 
first  thing  is  to  organize  the  workingmen,  teach  them 
how  to  defend  their  own  interests  and  to  overcome  their 
powerful  and  numerous  opponents,  at  first  symbolically, 
by  logical  arguments ;  and  if  they  prove  themselves  im- 
pervious to  all  logic  and  persist  in  their  actions  against 
all  morality  that  is  born  and  bound  by  the  facts  of  social 
necessity,  and  the  analogous  order  of  tilings,  then  with 
the  mailed  fist. 

Yet,  we  need  not  fear  that  it  will  come  to  that.  We 
gain  daily  in  numbers,  we  gain  in  power  and  in  prestige. 


196  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

As  soon  as  the  demoralized  rulers  will  see  the  signs  of 
the  time  and  come  to  know  our  power  they  will  court  us 
and  make  friends.  Those  people  are  not  the  barbarians 
they  would  like  to  appear. 

And  now  I  must  apologize  to  my  readers  for  having 
occupied  their  time  more  with  Biedermann  than  with 
Philosophy;  they  belong,  however,  insofar  to  the  same 
category  as  they  are  both  to  be  informed  that  we  must 
not  speculate  in  hazy  generalities,  but  that  we  must 
inquire  in  a  definite,  precise  and  special  manner  into 
the  material  at  hand  in  order  to  arrive  at  truth. 

IV. 

In  the  foregoing  chapters  we  have  represented  Philoso- 
phy as  the  descendant  of  Religion  and  like  it,  though 
somewhat  more  respectable,  as  a  phantastic  speculator. 
To  "  solve  the  riddle  of  existence " —  is  the  subject- 
matter  of  those  two  madcaps. 

The  philosophers  give  their  subject-matter  various 
pompous  titles.  We  have  already  seen  that  Herr  von 
Kirchmann  calls  it  "the  science  of  the  highest  concep- 
tions of  existence  and  knowledge."  ^  The  famous  Kant 
defines  it  as  "  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality. V  In  more 
recent  times  Duhring  defined  it  as  ",the  development  of 
the  highest  form  of  consciousness  of  the  world  and  life  " 
(Kursus  der  Philosophic  von  Dr.  E.  Duhring,  Leipzig, 
1875,  P-  2)-  "  Highest  form  of  consciousness  "  is  scien- 
tific knowledge,  and  the  "  evolution  "  thereof  is  performed 
by  researches.  According  to  that  we  ought  to  define 
Philosophy  as  the  scientific  exploration  of  the  world  and 
life. 

But  if  one  speaks  in  such  a  common-sense  way  the 
faculty  of  Philosophy  loses  its  halo,  moreover  it  becomes 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  197 

quite  superfluous,  for  such  an  investigation  is  carried  on 
successfully  by  the  special  branches  of  science.  It  seems 
that  Duhring  felt  the  uselessness  of  his  philosophic  guild, 
for  he  ascribes  to  it  also  the  function  of  '^practical  activ- 
ity." ;  Philosophy  has  thus  not  only  the  task  to  conceive 
world  and  life  in  a  scientific  manner,  but  to  demonstrate 
that  conception  through  the  character  and  actions  of  its 
adherents.  That  way  leads  to  Social-Democracy.  Hav- 
ing advanced  so  far,  the  philosopher  may,  perhaps,  get  a 
deeper  insight  into  things  and  do  away  with  Philosophy 
altogether.  To  be  sure  no  man  can  do  without  some 
conception  of  world  and  life,  but  that  of  Philosophy  is  of 
a  kind  which  is  utterly  useless.  Its  wisdom  is  an  inter- 
mediate stage  between  religion  and  science.  The  crea- 
tion story  of  the  Holy  Books  is  too  childish  for  the 
philosopher,  and  the  airy,  fact-removed  and  purely  mind- 
born  philosophical  sommersaults  are  too  fantastic  for 
science.  We  said  before  the  method  is  the  distinguishing 
feature  between  religion,  philosophy  and  science.  All 
three  look  for  wisdom.  The  method  of  religion  is  to  look 
for  wisdom  on  the  Mount  Sinai  behind  clouds  or  among 
ghosts.  Philosophy  applies  itself  to  the  human  mind,  but 
as  long  as  the  mind  itself  is  befogged  by  religious  mists, 
it  asks  and  functions  in  a  perverted  manner,  that  is,  with- 
out real  premises,  in  a  speculative  way  or  in  hazy  gen- 
eralities. The  method  of  exact  science  operates  with  the 
material  of  the  perceptible  world  of  phenomena.  As  soon 
as  we  learn  to  know  that  method  as  the  only  rational 
one  of  the  intellect,  all  phantasms  are  at  an  end. 

If  this  disquisition  happens  to  come  under  the  eye  of 
a  professional  philosopher  he  will  surely  sneer  at  it,  and 
if  he  condescends  to  reply  to  it  he  will  try  to  explain  that 
the  men  of  the  special  sciences  are  uncritical  materialists 
who  accept  the  perceptible  world  of  experience  without 


I9§  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

further  examination  into  its  truth.  And  as  to  his  operat- 
ing without  any  real  premises  he  will  refer  you  to  the 
many  pranks  and  delusions  of  the  senses  which  lead  us 
often  into  errors.  Therefore  he  asks :  What  is  truth 
and  how  do  we  arrive  at  it? 

Right  he  is.  Truth  is  a  great  question.  It  is,  especially 
for  Social-Democrats,  an  interesting  question.  In  the 
domain  of  natural  science  all  ghost-seeing  has  been  re- 
moved by  a  rational  method.  (  But  in  social  life,  where 
we  have  to  deal  with  masters  and  servants,  with  labor 
and  its  produce,  with  right,  duty,  law,  morality  and  order, 
there  the  parson  and  the  professor  of  Philosophy  are  still 
regarded  as  authorities  and  each  of  them  has  his  special 
method  to  mask  truth.  Religion  and  Philosophy,  once 
harmless  errors,  have  now  been  turned  into  crafty  tricks 
to  bamboozle  the  people  and  to  serve  the  interests  of 
reaction. 

From  the  lesson  given  in  the  preceeding  article  by 
Professor  Biedermann  we  have  learned  that  it  is  futile 
to  put  any  question  in  an  indefinite  and  hazy  manner. 
In  this  respect  Philosophy  has  put  itself  in  opposition 
to  sound  common  sense.  (^  For  it  does  not  seek,  like  the 
special  branches  of  science,  for  definite  empirical  truths, 
but  it  seeks,  like  religion,  for  an  extraordinary  sort  of 
truth,  for  an  absolute,  unreal  and  exaggerated  one.  What 
everybody  thinks  to  be  true,  what  we  see,  hear,  feel,  taste 
and  smell,  in  short,  our  bodily  sensations,  do  not  com- 
mend themselves  to  Philosophy  as  sufficiently  true.  Nat- 
ural phenomena  are  in  its  eyes  only  appearances  or  sem- 
blances, and  she  refuses  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
them.  That  Philosophy  treats  Nature  with  disdain,  it 
dare  not  admit,  because  natural  science  has  gained  in  the 
last  hundred  years  a  reputation  which  cannot  be  gain- 
said. It  is  none  the  less  certain  that  Philosophy  seeks 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  I9Q 

for  a  truth  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  Nature.  (Philo- 
sophic truth  that  can  nowhere  be  traced  must  surely  have 
an  aroma  of  its  own,  and  belong  to  a  species  totally  dif- 
ferent from  the  natural.  It  is  just  that  the  philosopher 
labors  under  religious  delusions  and  wants  to  go  beyond 
all  natural  phenomena  and  looks  behind  this  world  of 
phenomena  for  another  world  of  truth  by  which  the 
first  could  be  explained  —  because  of  all  that,  I  say,  he 
has  taken  refuge  to  a  method  without  any  really  given 
premises,  which  tries  to  weave  thoughts  into  definite 
materials,  or,  in  other  words,  blunders  about  in  hazy  gen- 
eralities. Descartes  is  supposed  to  have  discovered  a  tiny 
bit  of  that  transcendental  truth ;  it  is  at  least  that  bit  on 
which  Philosophy  has  been  living  ever  since.  The  par- 
son's truth,  the  passive  belief,  which  was  then  current, 
did  not  satisfy  the  philosopher.  ^He  began  to  make  en- 
quiries with  the  doubt  which  he  exercised  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  he  doubted  everything  which  is  visible  and 
audible.  But  he  noticed  that  one  thing  was  certain  to 
him,  viz.,  the  bodily  sensation  of  his  own  doubt.  He, 
therefore,  put  forward  the  proposition :  Cogito,  ergo 
sum  (I  am  thinking,  therefore  do  I  exist)."  Since  then 
it  has  been  impossible  for  his  successors  to  rid  themselves 
of  their  exaggerated  doubtfulness  and  of  their  quests 
after  exaggerated  truth. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  refuse  to  recognize  the  historic 
importance  and  the  keenness  of  mind  of  that  famous  scep- 
tic. He  was  right ;  the  bodily  sensation  of  existence,  my 
consciousness,  my  thinking,  feeling,  in  short,  "  my  soul  " 
is,  as  the  parson  says,  beyond  doubt.  Yet  I  must  add,  that 
I  am  ascribing  to  Descartes  much  more  than  he  really 
achieved.  It  is  like  this,  the  philosopher  had  two  souls, 
a  traditionally  religious  and  a  scientific  one.  His  philoso- 
phy has  a  mixture  of  both.  Religion  deluded  him  into 


2OO  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

believing  that  the  perceptible  world  was  unreal,  whilst 
his  scientific  cross-current  tried  to  imbue  him  with  the 
conviction  that  the  opposite  was  true.  With  the  unreal- 
ity, with  the  doubt  he  started  out  and  with  the  state- 
ment of  his  bodily  sensation  of  existence  he  proved  the 
opposite.  Yet  the  scientific  cross-current  did  not  succeed 
in  gaining  a  full  and  final  victory.  It  is  only  the  impar- 
tial enquirer  who,  when  repeating  the  experiment  of 
Descartes,  finds  out  that  it  is  the  bodily  sensation  which 
gives  us  certainty  of  the  existence  of  the  process  of 
thought  when  ideas  and  doubts  are  moving  about  in  the 
head.  The  philosopher  turned  the  thing  upside  down,  he 
wanted  to  prove  the  bodily  existence  of  the  abstract 
thought  —  he  assumed  to  be  able  to  prove  scientifically 
the  exaggerated  truth  of  a  religious  or  philosophic  soul, 
while  in  reality  he  has  only  confirmed  the  common  truth 
that  bodily  sensation  exists.  The  sensation  of  profane 
existence  Descartes  mistook  for  a  proof  of  the  existence 
of  a  higher  being.  His  misfortune  is  the  general  mis- 
fortune of  all  philosophy:  to  be  purely  idealistic  and 
spellbound. 

I  am  introducing  the  readers  of  the  Volksstaat  to  a 
subject-matter  which  they  might  consider  too  subtle.  But 
we  must  make  proselytes  also  among  the  scholars.  So 
we  must  prove  that  we  are  well  informed  about  "  the 
last  causes  "  of  all  things,  and  that  our  cause  has  its 
foundations  laid  in  the  deepest  depths.  We  must  make 
short  work  also  of  the  philosophic  bombast.  Pure  ideal- 
ists! A  clear-headed  workingman,  when  coming  to 
know  them,  will  hardly  think  it  possible  that  there  are 
such  foolish  fellows.  Idealists  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  word  are  all  aspiring-  men.  All  the  more  so  the 
Social-Democrats.  Our  aim  is  a  grand  ideal.  But  the 
idealists  in  the  philosophic  sense  are  an  irresponsible  lot. 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  2OI 

They  assert  that  everything-  we  see,  hear,  feel,  etc.,  that 
the  whole  world  around  us  does  not  exist,  but  are  simply 
flashes  of  our  mind.  They  assert  that  our  intellect  is 
the  only  truth,  everything  else  is  an  idea,  a  phantasma- 
gory,  a  mirage,  an  appearance  in  the  purely  ideological 
sense  of  the  word.  Everything  which  we  perceive  of  the  •. 
external  world,  they  say,  is  not  an  objective  truth,  not  a 
real  thing,  but  only  a  subjective  drift  of  our  intellect. 
And  when  common  sense  refuses  to  accept  such  an  as- 
sumption they  will  in  a  plausible  manner  demonstrate 
and  tell  you  that  although  you  see  every  day  the  sun 
rising  in  the  East  and  setting  in  the  West,  yet  science 
teaches  quite  differently  and  you  must  have  recourse  to 
science  in  order  that  you  may  be  able  to  use  your  senses 
intelligently. 

Also  a  blind  hen,  says  the  proverb,  finds  sometimes  a 
good  grain.  Such  a  blind  hen  is  philosophic  idealism. 
That  the  things  which  we  see,  hear  or  feel  are  not 
objects  pure  and  simple,  is  its  good  grain.  Also  scientific 
physiology  comes  more  and  more  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  various-colored  objects  which  our  eyes  see,  are  sen- 
sations of  our  optic  nerve,  that  all  the  crude,  fine  and 
heavy  which  we  feel,  are  sensations  of  heavy,  fine  and 
crude.  Between  our  subjective  sensations  and  the  ob- 
jective things  no  absolute  line  can  be  drawn.  The  world 
is'  our  perceptible  world,  that  is,  as  perceived  by  our 
senses.  Without  eyes  the  objects  would  have  no  aspect 
whatsoever,  and  without  a  nose  they  would  have  nothing 
of  an  odor.  "There  is  no  noise  without  ears  to  hear  it, 
and  no  heat  and  cold  without  a  skin  to  feel  it,"  said 
Professor  W.  Preyer  in  Jena  in  one  of  his  latest  articles 
on  the  "  Limits  of  sense  perception."  The  things  of  the 
world  do  not  exist  "  in  themselves,"  but  they  possess  their 
properties  only  by  their  relation  to  each  other.  It  is  in 


2O2  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

relation  with  sunlight  and  our  optic  nerve  that  the  forest 
appears  green.  With  another  light  and  with  a  different 
optic  nerve  they  might  appear  blue  or  red.  Water  is  only 
liquid  in  relation  to  a  certain  temperature,  in  a  low  tem- 
perature water  becomes  hard  and  solid,  in  a  high  temper- 
ature it  turns  into  gas ;  it  generally  runs  downhill,  but 
when  in  touch  with  a  loaf  of  sugar  it  runs  upwards.  It 
has  no  properties  or  existence  in  itself,  but  gets  them  by 
relation  to  other  things.  As  with  the  water  so  it  is  with 
all  other  things.  Everything  is  but  the  quality  or  predi- 
cate of  Nature  which  is  nowhere  to  be  found  in  a  tran- 
scendental objectivity  or  Truth,  but  is  always  round  us  in 
fleeting  and  form-changing  appearances. 

The  questions  as  to  how  the  world  would  look  if  there 
were  no  eyes,  no  sun,  no  space,  no  temperature  or  intel- 
lect or  sensation,  are  idle,  and  fools  may  investigate 
them.  No  doubt,  in  science  as  well  as  in  life  we  are 
allowed  to  differentiate,  to  distinguish  and  to  classify 
ad  mHmtu.ni,  but  in  doing  that  we  must  never  forget  that 
all  things  form  a  single  unity  and  a  connected  whole. 
The  world  is  a  world  of  senses,  and  our  senses  and  our 
intellect  are  worldly.  This  is  by  no  means  a  "  limitation  " 
to  man,  but  to  those  distracted  ideologists  who  want  to 
go  beyond  Nature.  When  we  demonstrate  that  the  im- 
mortal soul  of  the  parson  or  the  undoubted  intellect  of 
the  philosopher  are  of  the  same  common  Nature  as  are 
all  the  other  phenomena  of  the  world,  then  we  have 
proved  that  the  other  phenomena  are  as  real  and  true  as 
the  undoubted  intellect  of  Descartes.  We  not  only  be- 
lieve, assume,  think  that  our  sensation  has  existence,  but 
we  feel  it  truly  and  really.  And  conversely :  The  whole 
truth  and  reality  is  based  on  feeling,  on  bodily  sensa- 
tion. Soul  and  body,  or  subject  and  object  as  the  old 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  2O3 

joke  is  called  by  its  modern  name,  are  of  the  same 
earthly,  perceptible,  empirical  stuff. 

"  Life  is  a  dream,"  said  the  ancients.  Now  the  philoso- 
phers come  with  the  latest :  "  The  world  is  our  Idea." 
Yes,  but  this  Idea  is  not  an  absolute  or  transcendental 
Truth.  It  is  quite  sufficient  when  we  distinguish  the 
great,  general  and  true  dream  in  daylight  from  the  more 
or  less  unconscious  dreaming  over  night  and  in  the  dark, 
since  in  so  doing  we  finish  with  pure  Idealism  which  is 
the  weakest  and  most  shortcoming  part  of  Philosophy. 

To  base  truth  not  on  the  word  of  God  and  not  on  tra- 
ditional principles,  but  our  principles  on  bodily  sensations 
—  that  is  the  cardinal  point  of  social-democratic 
philosophy.  . 

V. 

"  God  formed  the  human  body  out  of  a  clod  of  clay 
and  breathed  into  it  an  immortal  soul."  Since  that  time 
we  have  the  dualism  or  the  two-world  theory.  The  one, 
the  bodily,  the  material  world  is  dirt,  and  the  other,  the 
spiritual  or  mental  ghost-world  is  God's  breath.  That 
little  story  has  been  secularized  by  Philosophy,  that  is, 
adapted  to  the  Zeitgeist.  The  visible,  audible  and  tangi- 
ble, the  bodily  reality  is  still  regarded  as  dirty  clay,  while 
to  the  thinking  mind  is  given  the  kingdom  of  a  tran- 
scendental Truth,  Beauty  and  Freedom.  Just  as  the 
world  has  a  bad  name  in  the  Bible,  so  also  in  Philosophy. 
Among  all  phenomena  or  objects  which  Nature  offers, 
Philosophy  finds  only  one  object  worthy  of  attention, 
namely,  the  mind,  the  old  breath  of  God;  and  that  only 
because  it  appears  to  those  queer  heads  as  a  transcen- 
dental, unnatural,  metaphysical  thing.  It  is  surely  per- 
mitted to  the  inquirer  to  limit  himself  to  one  object,  but 
he  must  not  deify  it,  nor  tear  it  from  its  interconnection, 


2O4  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

nor  worship  it  in  an  exaggerated  manner.  The  philoso- 
pher who  approaches  the  human  mind  soberly  and  makes 
it  the  aim  of  his  inquiries,  like  any  other  object  of  the 
many  objects  in  the  world,  ceases  to  be  a  philosopher,  that 
is,  one  of  those  who  want  to  study  the  riddle  of  existence 
in  a  general,  hazy,  manner.  He  becomes  a  specialist  and 
the  special  science  of  the  theory  of  cognition  becomes  his 
special  branch  of  inquiry. 

Because  Philosophy  regarded  all  special  objects  of  the 
world  as  dirty  and  material,  nothing  remained  to  it  but 
the  hazy  speculation  in  indefinite,  misty  generalities.  The 
philosophers  possess,  however,  along  with  the  religious 
soul,  an  exact  Reason  with  a  scientific  tendency,  a  Reason 
which  wants  to  achieve  something  definite.  They  are, 
therefore,  compelled  to  look  out  for  a  definite  object,  for 
a  scientific  specialty.  The  logic  of  reality  has  driven 
Philosophy  to  become  and  to  undertake  something  which 
it  didn't  want  to  become  or  to  undertake.  The  reason- 
able desire  for  success  in  connection  with  the  traditional 
worship  of  the  divine  breath  gave  thus  to  Philosophy 
as  its  object  of  inquiry  the  matter-of-fact  Intellect. 

That  the  common  spirit  of  the  human  head  is  their 
true  spirit,  the  philosophers  hardly  know;  this  must  be 
made  clear  to  them  by  Social-Democrats,  The  philoso- 
phers, as  a  rule  university  professors,  have  an  interest 
in  preserving  for  their  professional  intellect  the  character 
of  the  divine  spark.  All  the  more  must  it  be  the  interest 
of  the  working  men  to  know  that  this  very  intellect  is  a 
common  natural  object.  .Behind  the  question  as  to 
whether  there  is  in  our  head  a  sublime  idealistic  spirit  or 
a  common  human  reason,  we  find  the  great  social  ques- 
tion hidden  as  to  whether  might  and  right  are  to-day  on 
the  side  of  the  privileged  class  or  on  the  side  of  the 
common  people. 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  20$ 

Struggle  of  the  good  against  evil  is  the  eternal  essence 
of  history.  Sometimes  the  struggle  reaches  an  acute 
stage,  as  for  instance  to-day  when  the  productive  working 
class  is  struggling  against  the  ruling  parasite  class.  In 
this  struggle  a  good  many  splinters  are  thrown  about. 
Everything  is  affected  by  it ;  even  the  language  is  going  to 
pieces.  The  "  highest  "  conceptions,  such  as  Truth,  Free- 
dom, Culture,  are  being  corrupted.  "  Philosophy  "  and 
"  seats  of  learning  "  must  be  put  in  inverted  commas  in 
order  to  mark  the  equivocal  character  which  they  have 
assumed.  Professors  have  become  generals  in  the  army 
of  evil.  On  the  right  wing  are  in  command  Treitschke, 
in  the  centre  von  Siebel,  on  the  left  wing  Jiirgen  Bona 
Meyer,  doctor  and  professor  of  Philosophy  in  Bonn. 
The  latter  delivered  lately  in  the  Berlin  "  Gegenwart,"  a 
logomachy  against  the  "  Unbelief  of  our  Times,"  against 
the  religion  of  Social-Democracy.  He  leads  the  crack 
regiments  of  his  "  science,"  the  labored  points  of  philo- 
sophic Idealism,  into  battle,  and  he  comes  just  in  time 
to  be  captured  with  his  war  materials  in  order  to  enable 
us  to  illustrate  by  them  to  the  students  of  social-demo- 
cratic Philosophy  our  subject-matter.', 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  we  have  already  mentioned 
the  feat  of  Descartes  which  the  professors  of  higher 
magics  or  Philosophy  are  in  the  habit  of  producing  before 
the  public  in  order  to  dupe  them.  They  try  to  demon- 
strate the  breath  of  God  as  truth.  To  be  sure. that  name 
fell  into  disrepute,  and  enlightened,  liberal-minded  people 
do  not  talk  any  more  of  the  immortal  soul.  Instead  of 
that  they  talk  in  a  sober,  materialist  way  of  consciousness, 
faculty  of  thought  and  ideas.  But  to  represent  it  as  hav- 
ing a  common  non-transcendental  nature,  no  enlightened 
man,  even  of  the  liberal  class,  would  dare  to  do.  It  is 
only  the  Social  agitator  who  represents  it  like  that.  To 


2O6  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Jiirgen  Bona  Meyer  and  Co.,  to  the  doctors  of  Philos- 
ophy, it  is  a  foregone  conclusion,  a  dogma,  that  the  hu- 
man mind  is  of  a  transcendental  nature.  Let  us  have  a 
look  at  that  dogma. 

We  feel  in  ourselves  the  bodily  existence  of  thinking 
Reason,  and  with  the  same  sensation  we  feel  outside  our- 
selves the  clods  of  clay,  the  trees  and  shrubs.  And  that 
which  we  feel  inside,  and  that  which  we  feel  outside  our- 
selves are  not  far  removed  from  each  other.  Both  be- 
long to  the  category  of  perceptible  phenomena,  of  empiric 
material,  and  both  become  known  to  us  through  sensa- 
tion. How  to  distinguish  subjective  from  objective  sen- 
sations, the  inside  from  the  outside,  100  real  dollars  from 
loo  imaginary  ones  —  of  that  we  shall  speak  upon  occa- 
sion. Here  it  is  only  necessary  to  grasp  that  the  inner 
thought,  like  the  inner  pain,  exists  as  objectively  as  the 
outside  world  exists  subjectively  in  relation  to  our  organs 
of  sensation.  The  relation  between  subject  and  object, 
spirit  and  Nature,  thought  and  existence,  which  has  puz- 
zled so  many  people,  becomes  clear  when  we  gain  the 
understanding  that  the  opposition  is  but  a  relative  one, 
that  these  opposites  differ  only  in  degrees. 

It  is  the  democratic  equality  of  all  things  in  Nature, 
of  the  body  and  the  soul,  which  cannot  enter  the  heads 
of  the  "  philosophers."  The  said  Meyer  with  his  science 
without  any  given  premises  starts  really  from  the  sup- 
position that  the  breath  of  God  or  the  immortal  soul  or 
the  philosophic  intellect  is  of  a  higher  and  more  direct 
Truth  than  any  other  children  of  the  common  mother 
Nature.  As  long  as  he  does  not  relinquish  that  idea  it  is 
easy  to  prove  that  the  "  external  world  "  is  of  mere  clay, 
and  that  its  existence  does  not  rest  on  science,  but  on 
belief. 

Let  Jiirgen  speak  for  himself :     "  The  man  who  is  a 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  2O/ 

non-believer  on  principle  must  again  and  again  be  re- 
ferred to  the  truth  proved  philosophically  that  all  our 
knowledge  rests  in  the  last  resort  on  some  sort  of  belief. 
Even  the  materialist  accepts  the  existence  of  the 
world  as  a  matter  of  belief.  He  does  not  possess  a 
direct  knowledge  of  it;  he  is  only  sure  of  the  idea 
of  the  world  which  arises  in  his  mind ;  he  believes  that 
there  is  something  which  corresponds  with  his  idea, 
that  the  represented  world  is  such  as  he  imagines  it  to 
be ;  he  does  believe  in  the  existence  of  an  external 
world  on  the  evidence  of  his  mind.  His  belief  in  the  ex- 
ternal world  is  primarily  a  belief  in  his  own  mind.  And 
why  does  he  believe  that  the  imagined  world  will  be  such 
as  the  human  mind  imagines  it  or  must  imagine  it? — Be- 
cause it  would  be  irrational  to  assume  that  the  human 
mind  which  has  the  impulse  and  the  power  to  imagine  an 
external  world,  would  necessarily  be  deceived  in  the  exer- 
cise of  its  power.  .  .  .  Thus  the  belief  in  the  senses 
is  in  the  last  resort  a  belief  in  the  fitness  of  our  mind. 
The  preconceived  notion  of  the  fitness  of  the  world  forms 
thus  the  last  basis  of  the  materialistic  conception." 

There  you  have  the  feat  of  Descartes  in  a  new  and 
cheaper  edition.  "  Only  the  idea  is  undoubtedly  certain," 
but  also  this  certainty  is  uncertain,  for  he  speaks  of  "  the 
belief  in  one's  own  mind."  Meyer's  belief  is  "  philo- 
sophically demonstrated,"  yet  he  knows  that  he  knows 
nothing,  that  all  is  merely  belief.  He  is  modest  with  re- 
gard to  knowledge  and  science,  but  overconfident  with 
regard  to  belief  and  religion.  Science  and  belief  are 
used  by  him  in  a  confused  manner,  maybe  that  he  does 
not  attach  any  importance  to  either  of  them. 

Now  it  is  "  philosophically  demonstrated  "  that  all  our 
knowledge  is  done  for.  For  the  benefit  of  the  reader 
I  may  add  that  the  guild  of  Philosophers  at  their  last 


2C)8  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

general  meeting  in  all  solemnity  carried  a  resolution  to 
purge  our  language  from  the  word  "  science,"  and  to 
put  belief  in  its  stead.  All  knowledge  is  henceforth 
merely  a  believing.  All  knowledge  is  now  at  an  end. 
Sure  enough,  Jiirgen  speaks  of  "  direct  certainty  "  and 
"  philosophically  proved  truth ;"  but  that  is  simply  an  un- 
conscious relapse  into  the  bad  manners  of  old.  Or,  may- 
be, he  uses  the  words  like  the  theologians  who  regard 
the  mother  of  Jesus  with  her  eternal  virginity,  or  the  talk- 
ing ass  of  Balaam  as  a  "  demonstrated  truth  "  and  "  direct 
certainty."  The  Professor,  however,  corrects  himself, 
for  he  says  explicitly :  the  belief  in  the  perceptible  world 
is  a  belief  in  one's  own  mind.  Thus  everything,  spirit 
and  Nature,  rests  on  belief.  But,  alas,  he  is  surely 
wrong  in  trying  to  impose  upon  us  dialectic-materialists 
the  resolution  of  his  guild.  For  us  the  resolution  is  not 
binding.  We  remain  true  to  the  use  of  the  language  in 
reserving  to  ourselves  knowledge,  and  in  surrendering 
all  mere  believing  to  the  parsons  and  Doctors  of  Philos- 
ophy. 

No  doubt  "  all  our  knowledge  "  rests  on  subjectivity. 
The  wall  yonder,  against  which  we  could  split  our  heads 
and  find  it,  therefore,  impenetrable,  may  be  passable  like 
mere  air  for  goblins,  angels,  demons  and  other  ghosts, 
or  for  such  people  who  deny  the  whole  dirty  clay  of  the 
perceptible  world  —  but  what  of  that?  Why  bother 
about  a  world  which  we  can't  perceive?  Maybe,  that 
what  people  call  fog  and  wind  are  really,  purely  or  "  in 
themselves/'  heavenly  flutes  and  counterbasses.  But  for 
all  that  we  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  transcen- 
dental moonshine.  Social-democratic  materialists  deal 
only  with  things  which  man  perceives  empirically.  To 
those  things  also  belongs  his  own  faculty  of  thinking. 
The  empirical  we  call  truth,  and  only  that  do  we  make 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  20Q 

an  object  of  science.  If  Professor  Jiirgen  Bona  Meyer 
and  the  pure  Idealists  want  to  introduce  a  perverted 
nomenclature,  to  give  science  the  name  of  belief  and 
priestcraft  the  name  of  science,,  then  it  becomes  evident 
to  a  good  many  people  that  the  official  Philosophy  has 
turned  from  a  devotee  to  a  servile  "  menial  of  the  Lord." 

Since  Kant  made  the  critique  of  Reason  a  specialty 
of  philosophic  research  we  know  that  the  five  senses  are 
not  alone  sufficient  to  gain  experience,  but  that  the  in- 
tellect must  co-operate  to  that  end.  The  critique  of 
Reason  has  also  taught  us  that  the  divine  spark  can  only 
become  active  in  the  material  domain,  that  is,  in  the  em- 
pirical world ;  that  Reason  without  the  help  of  the  senses 
has  no  sense  or  understanding,  and  is  therefore  a  thing 
of  common  relationship  with  all  other  things.  Yet  the 
great  philosopher  found  it  too  difficult  to  forget  the  story 
of  the  divinely  inspired  clod  of  clay  so  as  to  liberate  the 
mind  from  its  ghostly  effect  and  to  consummate  the 
emancipation  of  science  from  religion.  The  conception 
of  the  disdainful,  clay-like  matter  and  of  the  "  thing  in 
itself  "  or  the  transcendental  truth  enveloped  all  philoso- 
phers more  or  less  in  a  purely  idealistic  delusion  which 
solely  rests  on  the  belief  in  the  metaphysical  character  of 
the  human  mind. 

That  weak  spot  of  our  great  critic  is  now  taken  ad- 
vantage of  by  our  Prussian  and  Imperial  philosophers  in 
order  to  make  out  of  it  a  new  religious  idol,  and  a 
wretched  one  to  boot.  "  The  idealistic  belief  in  God," 
says  J.  B.  Meyer  in  the  above  mentioned  article,  "  is 
surely  not  knowledge  and  will  never  become  such,  but  it 
is  likewise  sure  that  the  materialist's  unbelief  is  not 
knowledge,  but  a  materialist  belief  which  can  no  more 
become  knowledge  than  the  idealistic  belief."  The  meta- 
physical craving  of  our  philosopher  would  be  quite  satis- 


2IO  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

fied  if  the  Social-Democrats  would  but  confess  that  they 
understand  as  little  of  the  question,  or  that  they  are  as 
much  in  the  dark  about  their  basic  principles  as  Meyer 
is  about  his.  He  wouldn't  perhaps  mind  atheism;  it  is 
the  Social-Democratic  self-consciousness  which  he  can't 
stand  —  the  self-consciousness  which  turns  even  against 
the  thin,  consumptive  belief  of  the  Prussian  and  Im- 
perial philosophers.  "  All  religious  belief,"  continues 
Meyer,  "  begins  with  some  exaggeration,  with  some  fal- 
lacy, and  needs,  therefore,  constant  cutting  of  its  false 
excrescences.  .  .  .  The  progress  of  belief  consists 
just  in  this,  that  through  the  increase  of  knowledge,  be- 
lief rids  itself  of  superstition."  But  he  forgets  to  in- 
form us  about  that  true  philosophic  miracle  of  a  religion 
free  from  superstition  which  is  to  remain  despite  the 
"  constant  cuttings."  He  goes  on  angrily :  "  The  pop- 
ular champions  of  the  materialistic  and  atheistic  unbelief 
are  with  few  exceptions  not  leaders  of  science,  but  mis- 
guided braggarts  of  knowledge."  Well,  dear  Jiirgen, 
they  do  not  at  all  claim  the  leadership  of  general  science, 
but  are  limiting  themselves  to  the  study  of  a  specialty, 
namely,  to  the  theory  of  cognition,  in  order  to  be  able 
to  send  the  parsons  of  Philosophy  about  their  business. 

VI. 

The  philosophic  apologies  of  Jiirgen  Bona  Meyer, 
quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  are  the  last  make-shifts  of  re- 
ligion. And  it  isn't  he  alone  who  plays  this  tune.  He 
has  with  him  in  the  literature  of  the  day  a  whole  com- 
pany of  musicians  who  are  in  the  same  boat.  All  of 
them  repeat  the  same  reactionary  refrain :  "  Back  to 
Kant."  The  question  has  therefore  an  importance  which 
goes  beyond  the  little  person  of  General  Jiirgen.  They 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  211 

do  not  want  to  go  back  to  Kant  because  this  great  thinker 
has  made  short  work  of  the  story  of  the  immortal  soul  — 
that  he  has  undoubtedly  done;  but  they  would  like  to 
return  to  him,  because  he,  on  the  other  hand,  has  left  in 
his  system  a  narrow  entrance  through  which  a  little  meta- 
physics can  be  smuggled  back  into  it  —  that  he  has  un- 
doubtedly done,  too. 

Idolatry,  Religion  and  Philosophy  are  three  slightly 
different  kinds  of  the  same  thing,  which  is  called  meta- 
physics or  cracked  Truth.  I  apologize  for  the  use  of  the 
latter  adjective,  but  an  unequivocal  characterization  de- 
mands a  strong  terminology.  The  cracked  Truth  has 
played  a  great  part  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Idol- 
atry, Religion  and  Philosophy  have  been  evolved  from 
one  another  in  the  course  of  time ;  and  now,  in  the  time 
of  Social-Democracy,  we  have  arrived  at  the  point  when 
Philosophy,  the  "  last  Mohican "  of  the  metaphysical 
tribe,  must  be  transformed  into  rational  Physics. 

It  is  clear :  all  perverted  wisdom  rests  on  the  perverted 
use  of  our  intellect.  And  nobody  has  been  more  suc- 
cessfully and  courageously  engaged  in  the  inquiry  of 
the  intellect  and  in  the  foundation  of  the  theory  of  cogni- 
tion than  Immanuel  Kant.  Still,  there  is  an  essential 
difference  between  him  and  his  successors  of  to-day.  In 
the  great  historic  struggle  against  superstition  he  stood 
on  the  side  of  progress ;  he  put  his  genius  into  the  service 
of  the  revolutionary  development  of  science,  while  our 
Prussian  philosophers  serve  reactionary  politics. 

As  long  as  the  philosophers  were  sometimes  in  danger 
of  being  sentenced  to  take  poison,  like  Socrates,  or  of 
ending  their  life  on  the  stake,  like  Giordano  Bruno,  of 
being  expelled  by  the  Prussians  and  threatened  with  the 
gallows,  like  Wolf,  or  of  being  placed  under  Police  super- 
vision, like  Kant  and  Fichte  —  in  short,  as  long  as 


212  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

Philosophy  was  a  dangerous  occupation,  it  was  also  an 
honest  endeavor  to  struggle  through  the  mists  of  meta- 
physics to  Reason,  to  rational  thinking.  Now,  however, 
when  philosophers  have  given  up  the  struggle  and  are 
sounding  retreat,  it  is  time  for  Social-Democracy  to  learn 
with  what  kind  of  "  science "  and  with  what  sort  of 
"  liberal  "  fellows  they  have  to  deal. 

The  push  with  which  Kant  has  thrown  metaphysics 
out  of  the  Temple,  and  the  narrow  back  door  which  he 
left  open  are  clearly  indicated  in  a  few  sentences  in  the 
preface  of  the  second  edition  to  his  "  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason."  Not  having  the  volume  at  hand,  I  quote  from 
memory.  They  are  as  follows :  Our  knowledge  is  lim- 
ited to  the  experienced  things,  to  the  phenomena;  what 
they  are  in  themselves  we  are  not  able  to  know.  Yet, 
the  things  must  be  something  in  themselves,  else  we 
would  arrive  at  the  inconsistent  proposition,  that  appear- 
ance exists  without  the  something  which  appears. 

The  great  thinker  argued  seemingly  quite  logically, 
and  yet  his  argument  is  altogether  faulty.  On  his  fal- 
lacy rests  the  metaphysical  remains  which  Philosophy 
still  drags  along. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  where  there  are  appearances 
there  is  also  something  which  appears.  But  how  would 
it  be  if  that  something  were  the  appearance  itself,  when 
appearances  simply  appear?  There  would  be  nothing 
illogical  or  irrational  in  that,  if  subject  and  predicate 
were  everywhere  in  Nature  of  the  same  kind.  Why 
should  the  something  which  appears  be  of  a  quality 
totally  different  from  the  appearance?  Why  can  the 
things  "  for  us  "  and  the  things  "  in  themselves  "-  —  why 
can  appearance  and  truth  not  be  of  the  same  empirical 
material,  of  the  same  Nature? 

Reply:     Because  the  superstition  about  the  metaphys- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  213 

ical  world  —  because  the  belief  in  the  dirty  clay,  which 
is  evident,  and  the  belief  in  an  imperceptible  exaggerated 
or  divine  truth,  which  must  somewhere  dwell  in  it,  has 
not  been  cleared  completely  out  of  Kant's  mind.  The 
syllogism :  Where  there  are  appearances  which  we  see, 
hear  and  feel,  there  must  also  be  concealed  in  them  some- 
thing quite  different,  a  so-called  higher  or  divine  Truth 
which  cannot  be  seen,  heard  or  felt  —  this  syllogism  is  a 
fallacy  despite  Kant. 

The  scholastic  squabble  about  God,  Freedom  and  Im- 
mortality was  repulsive  to  that  thinker.  Therefore  he 
put  the  intellect  to  the  test  and  asked,  whether  something 
cracked,  or  metaphysics,  could  be  possible  as  a  science. 
No,  was  his  reply  after  a  wonderfully  clear  and  thorough 
inquiry.  No,  our  instrument  of  cognition  depends  on 
experience  as  well  as  our  experience  on  that  instrument. 
In  other  words,  our  mind  cannot  produce  science  but 
with  the  help  of  perceptible  material,  and  science  must 
and  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  "  other  world." 
Only  in  its  conscious  connection  with  the  materialist  ex- 
perience may  the  intellect  become  operative,  and  all  ques- 
tioning into  hazy  generalities  can  lead  only  to  confusion 
and  failure. 

But  the  Konigsberg  Professor  had,  as  Heine  relates,  a 
valet,  a  common  fellow  of  the  people,  by  the  name  of 
Lampe,  to  whom,  it  is  said,  air  castles  were  an  emotional 
necessity.  The  Professor  took  pity  on  him  and  argued : 
whereas  the  world  of  experience  is  closely  connected  with 
the  intellect,  we  have  really  nothing  else  but  mental  ex- 
periences, that  is,  mental  appearances  or  flashes.  Em- 
pirical material  things  are  no  real  truths,  but  apparitions 
in  the  transcendental  sense  of  the  word,  cobwebs  of  the 
mind  or  something  like  it.  The  real  things  "  in  them- 
selves," the  metaphysical  truths,  are  beyond  our  experi- 


214  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

ence,  and  must  therefore  be  believed,  in  consequence  of 
the  well-known  argument:  Where  there  is  appearance 
there  must  be  something  (metaphysical)  which  appears. 

Thus  was  the  belief,  thus  was  the  cracked  truth 
snatched  from  the  fire  of  rational  inquiry,  which  was  very 
welcome,  not  only  to  the  valet  Lampe,  but  also  to  the 
German  Professors  in  the  "  Kulturkampf,"  for  "  pop- 
ular enlightment "  and  against  the  hated  and  radically 
unbelieving  Social-Democrats.  Immanuel  Kant  was 
henceforth  the  proper  man ;  he  helped  them  to  attain  the 
requisite,  though  not  scientific,  balance  of  mental  attitude. 

The  theologians  are  now  no  more  in  need  of  telling  us 
how  the  old  Lord  Zebaoth  looks,  in  how  many  choirs  the 
angels  are  divided,  and  in  how  many  regiments  the  devils, 
or  whether  the  commanders  are  called  Gabriel,  Michael 
or  Lucifer  —  for  Kant's  philosophy  has  proved  once  for 
all  that  nothing  can  be  known  about  them,  and  that, 
therefore,  the  parson  must  shut  up. 

But  when  the  Social-Democrats  appear  on  the  scene 
and  rejoice  over  the  good  news  that  superstition  has  dis- 
appeared and  that  the  cracked  hopes  have  ceased  troub- 
ling, and  that  the  earthly  salvation  has  begun,  then  —  of 
course,  things  look  different,  then  they  will  prove  to  you 
by  the  same  Kant  that,  though  we  cannot  see,  hear  or 
perceive  the  metaphysical  truth  which  dwells  behind  the 
natural  phenomena,  we  must  believe  in  it.  Thus  we  can- 
not get  rid  of  belief,  if  not  in  Rome,  and  if  not  in  the 
Bible,  then  in  the  "  Back  to  Kant,"  Jurgen  Bona  Meyer 
and  his  ilk. 

The  Social-Democrats  are  convinced  that  the  clerical 
Jesuits  are  less  dangerous  than  the  "  Liberal "  ones. 
Of  all  parties  the  party  of  the  middle-readers  is  the 
most  wretched.  It  uses  the  terms  Enlightenment  and 
Democracy  as  a  false  label  in  order  to  offer  to  the  peo- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC    PHILOSOPHY  215 

pie  adulterated  goods  and  to  discredit  the  genuine  ones. 
They,  of  course,  offer  their  goods  on  their  best  knowledge 
and  conscience.  And  we  do  believe  that  they  know  little ; 
but  the  worst  of  it  is  that  they  don't  want  to  know  and 
don't  want  to  learn.  The  superstition  is  with  them  not 
as  much  a  matter  of  brains  as  of  instinct.  They  are 
alarmed  at  ghost-freed  thought,  for  they  feel  instinctively 
that  it  is  dangerous  to  their  interests.  And  it  is  that 
instinctive  fear  which  paralyzes  them  and  renders  them 
unfit  for  courageous  and  consistent  research. 

Under  such  circumstances  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
treat  them  as  equals,  to  meet  them  in  a  friendly  spirit  and 
to  try  to  bring  them  back  on  the  right  path.  They  are 
by  no  means  stray  lambs,  but  bitter  foes.  Since  Kant  a 
century  has  gone;  Hegel  and  Feuerbach  have  come  and 
gone,  and  before  all,  the  capitalist  system  has  fully  devel- 
oped which  exploits  the  people  and,  finally,  when  no 
profits  can  be  made  out  of  them,  throws  them  pitilessly 
on  the  street  and  leaves  them  to  starvation.  Then  the 
people  open  their  innocent  eyes.  All  ideology  is  driven 
out  of  them,  and  thus  we  need  no  tender  pedagogues,  nor 
Moses  and  the  Prophets  to  educate  the  masses.  Our 
pupils,  the  wage-earners,  possess  all  qualifications  neces- 
sary to  gain  an  insight  into  the  Social-Democratic  Phi- 
losophy, which  regards  the  natural  phenomena  as  the 
material  for  theoretical  or  scientific  truth,  the  empirical 
and  materialist,  or,  if  you  like,  also  subjective  truth, 
which,  however,  must  be  clearly  distinguished  from  the 
extravagant  or  cracked  truth  of  metaphysics. 

Just  as  in  politics  we  see  the  nation  dividing  itself 
into  two  camps,  on  one  side  the  wage-earners  and  on  the 
other  the  capitalists,  corresponding  with  the  economic 
development  which  is  thinning  the  ranks  of  the  middle 
classes  and  leaving  only  two  classes:  the  Have  and  the 


2l6  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

Have-not,  so  is  science  divided  in  two  general  divisions : 
into  metaphysicians  there  and  into  physicists  or  material- 
ists here.  The  intermediate  members  and  conciliating 
quacks  with  their  different  appellations :  Spiritualists, 
Sensualists,  Realists,  etc.,  etc.,  fall  underway  into  the 
current.  We  are  steering  full  steam  ahead  to  a  definite 
and  clear  outline  of  things.  Pure  Idealists  are  those 
who  sound  the  retreat,  and  dialectic  Materialists  must  be 
the  appellation  of  all  those  who  strive  for  the  liberation 
of  the  human  mind  from  all  metaphysical  magics.  In 
order  that  names  and  definitions  may  not  confuse  us  we 
must  steadily  keep  in  mind  that  the  general  want  of  clear- 
ness has  not  allowed  yet  of  establishing  a  distinct  termi- 
nology in  this  field. 

In  comparing  the  two  parties  w-ith  solid  and  liquid 
matter  we  find  pulpiness  as  the  intermediate  stage.  Such 
indistinctness  is  the  general  nature  of  all  things  in  tKe 
world.  It  is  only  the  faculty  of  cognition,  or  science, 
which  clears  them  and  puts  them  asunder,  just  as  it  has 
distinguished  heat  from  cold  by  inventing  a  thermometer 
and  agreed  to  regard  the  freezing  point  as  the  fixed  limit 
where  the  indistinct  temperature  is  divided  into  two  dif- 
ferent classes.  The  interest  of  Social-Democracy  de- 
mands that  we  should  apply  the  same  process  to  Philos- 
ophy, that  we  divide  the  general  species  of  thought  into 
two  classes:  into  purely  idealistic,  religious,  emotional 
twaddle  and  into  a  sober,  inductive  or  materialist  method 
of  thinking. 

VII. 

This  series  of  lectures,  published  in  the  Volksstaat, 
have  been  temporarily  interrupted.  I  shall  not  speak  of 
the  reasons  which  led  to  the  interruptions,  but  let  me 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY 

simply  say  that  I  am  going  to  continue  them,  or  rather 
start  them  anew. 

Dialectically  speaking,  the  continuation  of  the  old  is 
at  the  same  time  a  fresh  start,  especially  in  our  subject- 
matter,  for  the  social-democratic  conception  of  the  world 
is  a  complete  system  which,  in  the  form  of  an  inverted  i 
pyramid,  moves,  like  a  whipping-top,  on  its  point.  And 
as  the  whipping-top  spins  only  in  connection  with  its 
broad  head  and  with  its  level  plane  and  with  its  string 
which  sets  it  in  motion,  so  can  the  point  of  our  new,  sys- 
tematic conception  of  the  world  not  be  represented  in 
an  isolated  manner  in  itself,  but  only  in  the  closest  con- 
nection with  the  manifold  questions  which  agitate  the 
world.  This  subject-matter,  "  the  fixed  pole  in  the  cease- 
less motion  of  events,"  needs  thus  continuous  variations 
in  order  to  go  on  with  the  old  continuation  by  a  fresh 
start. 

Though  we  Social-Democrats  are  atheists  without  re- 
ligion, we  are  not  irreligious,  that  is,  the  gulf  between  us 
and  the  religions  is  great  and  deep,  but  has,  like  other 
gulfs,  its  bridge.  It  is  my  intention  to  lead  the  social- 
democratic  comrades  to  that  bridge  and  to  show  them 
from  there  the  difference  between  the  wilderness  in  which 
the  believers  are  wandering  about  and  the  promised  land 
of  serenity  and  truth. 

The  supreme  commandment  of  the  Christian  is :  Thou 
shalt  love  God  beyond  everything  and  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself.  Well,  God  beyond  everything.  But  who  is 
God?  He  is  the  beginning  and  the  end,  the  Creator  of 
Heaven  and  earth.  We  don't  believe  in  his  existence, 
and  yet  we  find  something  reasonable  in  the  command 
which  orders  us  to  love  him  beyond  everything. 

Those  who  contemplate  the  Eternal,  Omnipresent  and 


2l8  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Most  Honored  cannot  fail  to  perceive  that  He  is  in  reality 
nothing  else  but  the  personification  of  the  Universe ;  no 
mortal  can  claim  nowadays  to  have  seen  the  All-Father 
and  to  have  spoken  to  him.  Yet  the  atheists,  too,  must 
acknowledge  that  reason-gifted  man  is,  despite  his  intel- 
lect and  his  science,  a  subordinate  creature,  dependent  on 
sun  and  winds,  earth,  fire,  air  and  water.  That  means 
that  our  mind,  destined  though  it  is  to  rule  over  matter, 
is  none  the  less  a  limited  ruler. 

With  our  intellect  we  can  rule  in  a  formal  manner 
only.  On  a  small  scale  we  are  able  to  control  the 
changes  and  movements  of  matter  according  to  our  will, 
but  taken  as  a  whole,  as  the  substance  of  things,  cosmic 
matter  is  superior  to  all  mental  capabilities.  Science  is 
able  to  transform  mechanical  energy  into  heat,  electricity, 
light,  chemical  energy,  etc.,  and  it  may  succeed  in  trans- 
forming all  phenomena  of  matter  and  of  force  into  one 
another  and  to  reduce  all  its  forms  to  one  element;  but 
all  this  granted,  science  can  only  change  the  form,  while 
the  essence  remains  eternal,  imperishable  and  indestruct- 
ible, a  given  material.  The  intellect  can  get  out  of  mat- 
ter the  secret  of  its  physical  changes,  but  they  are  after 
all  material  ways  which  the  proud  intellect  can  only  fol- 
low but  not  command.  Sound  thinking  must  always  be 
conscious  of  the  fact  that  it  is,  together  with  the  "  im- 
mortal soul "  and  the  knowledge-proud  reason,  only  a 
subordinate  piece  of  the  Universe,  though  our  present 
"  philosophers  "  are  still  occupied  with  the  jugglery  of 
transforming  the  real  world  into  an  "  idea "  of  man. 
The  religious  commandment :  Thou  shalt  love  God  be- 
yond everything,  means  in  plain  social-democratic  lan- 
guage: Thou  shalt  love  and  honor  the  material  world, 
the  corporeal  Nature  or  the  perceptible  existence  as  the 
final  cause  of  all  things,  as  the  Existence  without  a  begin- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY 

ning  and  an  end,  which  was,  is  and  will  be  from  eternity 
to  eternity. 

As  it  is  well  known  and  as  we  have  repeatedly  stated, 
the  philosophers  are  a  more  or  less  progressive  offshoot 
of  the  theologians  and  doctors  of  divinity.  All  of  them 
are,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  "  one  reactionary 
mass,"  that  is,  their  common  characteristics  are  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  they  regard  the  Universe  as  the 
product  of  the  Intellect,  while  we  regard  the  Intellect  and 
all  other  forces,  like  heat,  gravitation  and  all  which  is 
audible,  visible  and  tangible,  as  a  form  or  species,  as  a 
piece  or  product  of  the  general  force,  which  is  identical 
with  the  omnipresent,  eternal  and  indestructible  cosmic 
matter.  Language  has  so  far  treated  the  conception  of 
force  and  matter  rather  arbitrarily.  Palpable  things  like 
wood,  stone,  clay,  etc.,  are  ponderable  forces,  while  those 
things  which  we  cannot  touch  with  our  hands,  for  in- 
stance, light,  heat,  tunes,  we  call  imponderable  matter. 
The  world  of  tunes  constitutes  the  matter  of  the  musi- 
cian. And  those  who  dislike  this  generalization  of  the 
word  "  matter "  may,  instead  of  that,  speak  of  "  phe- 
nomena." Bodily,  physical,  perceptible,  material  phe- 
nomenon is  the  name  of  the  general  species,  to  which 
everything  belongs,  the  ponderable  and  the  imponder- 
able, body  and  soul. 

In  order  to  clear  ourselves  of  the  "  metaphysical  crav- 
ing "  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  keep  in  mind  that  all 
differences  which  we  may  make  are  but  the  manifold 
forms  or  the  attributes  of  one  indivisible  unity.  Though 
we  differentiate  between  the  bodily  and  the  mental  forms, 
the  difference  is  none  the  less  but  a  relative  one;  they 
are  but  two  kinds  of  one  and  the  same  existence.  This 
difference  is  no  greater  than  that  between  cat  and  dog, 
who,  regardless  of  their  well-known  animosity,  belong 


22O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

to  the  same  class  or  species,  namely,  to  that  of  domestic 
animals. 

Natural  science  in  its  narrower  sense  cannot  give  us  the 
monistic  conception  of  the  world  (that  is,  unity  of  Na- 
ture :  unity  of  matter  and  mind,  of  the  organic  and  inor- 
ganic, etc.)  which  is  so  eagerly  looked  for  in  our  time, 
even  if  science  succeed  in  proving  satisfactorily  the  ori- 
gin of  species  and  the  evolution  of  the  organic  from  the 
inorganic.  Science  achieves  all  its  discoveries  through 
the  intellect.  The  visible,  tangible  and  ponderable  part 
of  that  organ  undoubtedly  belongs  to  the  domain  of  nat- 
ural science ;  but  the  function,  the  thinking,  is  investi- 
gated by  a  separate  science  which  some  call  Logic,  or 
Epistemology  or  Dialectics.  The  latter  department  of 
science,  the  understanding  or  misunderstanding  of  the 
mental  function,  is  the  common  ground  of  religion,  meta- 
physics and  the  anti-metaphysical  investigation.  Here 
the  bridge  is  to  be  found  which  leads  from  servile,  super- 
stitious oppression  to  modest  freedom.  Also  in  the  de- 
mocracy of  epistemological  freedom  modesty  governs, 
that  is,  submission  to  material,  physical  necessity. 

The  inevitable  religion  changes  in  the  heads  of  the 
philosophers  into  metaphysics,  and  in  the  heads  of  clear 
thinkers  into  the  undeniable  necessity  of  a  monistic  con- 
ception of  the  world.  The  existing  matter-force,  also 
called  Universe  or  Existence,  becomes  mystified  in  the 
heads  of  the  theologians  and  philosophers,  because  they 
do  not  understand  that  matter  and  mind  are  of  the  same 
species,  and  because  they  pervert  the  relation  in  which 
they  stand  to  each  other.  Materialism  is,  like  Political 
Economy,  a  scientific,  a  historical  result.  Just  as  we 
distinguish  between  modern  and  Utopian  socialism,  so 
also  between  modern  and  i8th  century  materialism.  With 
the  latter  we  have  only  this  in  common  that  we  assume 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  221 

matter  as  the  premise,  as  the  cause  of  the  idea.  Cosmic 
matter  is  to  us  the  substance,  while  mind  is  the  incidence ; 
the  empirical  phenomenon  is  to  us  the  species,  and  the 
intellect  but  a  variety  or  form  of  it,  while  all  religious 
and  philosophic  idealists  assume  the  idea  to  be  the  pri- 
mary, the  causative  and  the  substantive  force. 

What  we  see,  hear,  feel,  etc.,  say  the  idealists,  are  the 
intellectual  phenomena,  insofar  as  the  intellect  must  exist 
where  things  are  to  be  seen,  heard  and  felt.  Good  and 
well,  say  their  opponents,  but  with  it  there  is  also  matter. 
Where  there  is  intellect,  thinking,  consciousness  and 
knowledge,  there  must  be  an  object,  too,  a  matter  which 
is  perceived,  and  that  is  the  main  thing.  What  is  the 
main  thing,  matter  or  mind?  That  is  the  old  question 
which  separates  idealists  from  materialists.  But  that 
question,  too,  is  but  a  piece  of  hazy  phraseology.  The 
real  difference  between  the  two  camps  is  that  the  one 
turns  the  Universe  into  witchery,  while  the  other  camp 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  that.  All  natural  phenom- 
ena being  only  perceptible  with  the  aid  of  our  intellect, 
all  our  perceptions  are  intellectual  phenomena.  Quite 
so.  But  in  that  sum  total  is  included  a  special  sensation, 
a  phenomenon,  which  especially  deserves  the  adjective 
"  intellectual,"  and  that  is  human  reason,  mind  or  the 
faculty  of  forming  ideas,  while  the  other  phenomena  are 
collectively  called  material.  Therefore  it  really  comes  to 
this:  matter,  force  and  intellect  are  of  the  same  origin. 
It  is  indeed  a  miserable  logomachy  to  quarrel  about  the 
adjectives  "  intellectual "  and  "  material."  The  main 
thing  is  to  know  whether  all  things  are  of  the  same  spe- 
cies or  whether  the  Universe  is  to  be  divided  in  a  super- 
natural, mysterious  witchery  and  a  natural,  ordinary  clay. 

Those  who  desire  to  gain  a  clear  notion  about  that 
must  not  be  satisfied  with  simply  following  the  example 


222  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

of  the  old  materialist  who  reduced  everything  to  ponder- 
able atoms.  Cosmic  matter  has  not  only  gravity,  but 
aroma,  light  and  sound  —  and  why  not  also  intelligence  ? 
If  the  smellible,  visible  and  audible  is  more  spiritual  than 
the  ponderable  —  if  the  comparative  is  natural,  why  not 
also  the  superlative?  Gravity  cannot  be  seen  nor  light 
be  smelled,  nor  the  intellect  be  touched,  but  we  may 
perceive  everything  which  exists.  Don't  we  perceive 
our  thoughts  as  physically  as  we  feel  pain,  light, 
heat  or  stones?  The  prejudice  that  ponderable  objects 
are  more  perceptible  than  the  phenomena  which  are  com- 
municated to  us  through  hearing  or  feeling  in  general 
misled  the  old  materialists  to  their  atomistic  speculations, 
misled  them  to  make  the  ponderable  the  final  cause  of 
things.  The  conception  of  matter  must  be  given  a  more 
comprehensive  meaning.  To  it  belong  all  phenomena 
of  reality,  also  our  force  of  thinking.  To  the  idealists 
who  call  all  natural  phenomena  "  Ideas  "  or  "  intellectual 
phenomena  "  we  say  that  the  natural  phenomena  are  by 
no  means  "  things  in  themselves,"  but  objects  of  our 
sensations.  Since  also  the  particular  phenomenon  called 
subjective  feeling,  soul  or  consciousness  is  an  object  of 
sensation,  there  is  no  use  here  splitting  up  things  into  sub- 
jective and  objective.  The  objective  thing  can  only  be 
perceived  subjectively,  and  vice  versa.  Both  exist  and 
both  are  of  the  same  kind ;  body  and  soul  are  of  the  same 
empirical  material.  An  impartial  observer  can  have  no 
doubt  that  spiritual  material,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  that 
the  phenomenon  of  our  force  of  thinking  is  a  part  of  the 
world  and  not  the  reverse.  The  whole  governs  the  part, 
cosmic  matter  the  mind,  at  least  in  the  main,  though  it  is 
true  that  mind  reacts  on  cosmic  matter.  And  it  is  in 
this  sense  that  I  said  we  must  love  and  honor  the  mate- 


SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY  223 

rial  world  as  the  supreme  being,  as  the  cause  of  all 
causes,  as  the  creator  of  heaven  and  earth. 

That  confession  does  not  in  the  least  prevent  us  from 
regarding  the  intellect  as  the  primus  inter  pares,  as  the 
first  object  of  all  the  objects  in  the  world. 

When  Social-Democrats  call  themselves  materialists, 
they  only  want  to  emphasize  their  view  that  they  refuse 
to  acknowledge  anything  which  pretends  to  lie  beyond 
human  cognition  in  a  metaphysical  way.  All  witchery 
must  go  overboard. 

But  —  so  do  our  philosophical  ravens  croak  —  what 
about  "the  limits  of  natural  cognition?"  Has  not  the 
learned  Du-Bois-Reymond  proved  conclusively  that  the 
haughty  intellect  has  its  limits?  And  has  not  our  late 
socialist  friend,  F.  A.  Lange,  the  expert  historian  of  Ma- 
terialism, agreed  to  all  that  and  expressly  declared  that 
all  our  knowledge  could  not  penetrate  the  essence  of 
things,  and  that,  after  all,  something  mystical  and  incon- 
ceivable must  remain  unsolved  forever? 

That  theory  of  the  limited  understanding  of  common 
humanity  is  a  fool's  theory,  which  we  shall  still  further 
discuss. 


THE  LIMITS   OF  COGNITION. 

(VOR  WARTS,    1877) 

An  anonymous  letter  touching  the  above  subject, 
written  evidently  by  an  expert,  has  recently  been  re- 
ceived by  the  Vorwdrts,  which  in  an  unbiased  manner 
attempts  to  show  that  Philosophy  and  Social-Democracy 
are  two  things  apart  and  that,  therefore,  one  may  very 
well  belong  to  our  party  without  adhering  to  the 
"Social-Democratic  Philosophy."  Hence  it  is  concluded 
that  the  central  organ  of  the  party  was  wrong  in  allow- 
ing philosophic  discussion  to  become  a  party  matter. 

The  editor  of  the  Vorwdrts  has  been  good  enough  to 
show  me  that  letter  as  it  referred  to  my  articles.  Though 
the  author  has  given  clearly  to  understand  that  he  had 
no  wish  to  provoke  by  his  protest  any  public  contro- 
versy, since,  as  he  maintains,  newspaper  controversies 
did  not  admit  of  a  thorough  treatment  of  the  subject, 
nevertheless  I  hope  he  will  not  find  it  indiscreet  if  his 
objections  are  used  here  for  the  purpose  of  elucidating 
a  question  which  both  to  him  and  to  myself  and,  to  judge 
from  the  general  interest  displayed  at  present  with  re- 
gard to  it,  appears  to  be  of  great  importance  to  our  whole 
generation.  And  as  regards  thoroughness,  it  seems  to 
me  that  voluminous  books  are  no  better  qualified  for  it 
than  newspaper  articles.  On  the  contrary,  there  has  been 
of  late  so  much  longwinded  twaddle  that  a  great  portion 
of  the  public  is  losing  all  taste  for  the  discussion  of  such 
matters. 

224 


THE   LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  225 

First  of  all  I  should  like  to  contradict  the  statement 
that  Philosophy  and  Social-Democracy  were  two  things 
apart  which  had  nothing  between  them  in  common.  Quite 
true,  one  may  be  an  efficient  member  of  the  party  and  at 
the  same  time  a  "critical  philosopher,"  or  even  a  Chris- 
tian. The  human  soul  is  such  a  queer  thing  that  it  can 
easily  find  some  sort  of  conciliation  between  the  veriest 
contradictions.  And  not  only  in  things  philosophical 
and  religious,  but  also  in  things  economical,  a  great 
measure  of  heresy  is  permitted.  We  must  in  practice 
be  tolerant  to  the  extreme,  and  surely  no  Social-Demo- 
crat would  ever  think  of  putting  any  Party  member  into 
the  straight  jacket  of  uniformity.  Nevertheless,  theoreti- 
cal uniformity  must  be  demanded  of  all  who  devote  them- 
selves to  scientific  investigation.  Theoretical  uniformity, 
systematic  homogeneity  is  the  consummation  to  be  de- 
sired as  well  as  the  advantage  of  all  science.  That 
Social-Democracy  is  scientific  and  science  is  social-demo- 
cratic will,  I  hope,  be  granted  by  my  esteemed  opponent. 
Of  course,  there  are  many  branches  of  science  which 
bear  less  on  the  socialistic  aspirations  to  emancipate  en- 
slaved humanity.  But  the  philosophical  question  —  the 
question  whether  there  is  beyond  and  above  the  world 
anything  metaphysical,  "  anything  higher,"  which  it 
would  be  too  monstrous  for  our  intellect  to  attempt  to 
conceive,  or  which  is  beyond  the  human  understanding 
to  explain  —  this  special  question  of  Philosophy  about 
the  "  Limits  of  Cognition  "  bears  very  closely  upon  the 
slavery  of  the  people. 

Social-Democracy  does  not  seek  to  establish  eternal 
laws,  permanent  institutions  or  unchangeable  forms ;  it 
seeks  in  general  the  salvation  of  mankind.  The  indis- 
pensable means  to \vard  attaining  that  object  is  mental 
The  question  whether  the  instrument  of 


226  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

cognition  is  a  narrow  makeshift,  that  is  an  inferior  one, 
whether  scientific  research  supplies  us  with  true  ideas, 
with  truth  in  its  highest  form  and  last  instance,  or  mere- 
ly with  poor  "  substitutes  "  which  have  above  them  the 
Inconceivable  —  this  problem  of  the  Theory  of  Cognition 
is  eminently  a  Socialist  problem. 

All  the  ruling  powers  which  have  exploited  the  people 
have  to  this  very  day  appealed  for  justification  to  a 
higher  destiny,  to  the  grace  of  God,  to  the  holy  ointment, 
to  the  metaphysical  incense.  And  if  they  also  referred  to 
enlightenment,  religious  freedom,  political  progress  and 
critical  philosophy,  they  knew  very  well  that  without 
"  something  higher,"  something  inconceivable,  something 
metaphysical,  be  it  even  a  mere  "  moral  world,"  the 
reins  will  break  which  keep  the  people  straight  and  the 
ruling  classes  in  wealth  and  dignity. 

But  let  there  be  no  misunderstanding.  Not  that  the 
Social-Democracy  are  against  the  moral  world.  We, 
too,  desire  to  arrange  the  world  morally;  but  we  desire 
this  arrangement  to  emanate  from  the  many  below,  and 
not  from  the  few  above,  that  is,  we  desire  to  arrange  it 
ourselves.  We,  therefore,  need  no  chimeras,  no  "  limits 
of  cognition  "  to  effect  and  to  keep  up  such  an  arrange- 
ment. It  is,  on  the  contrary,  preeminently  the  business 
of  Social-Democracy  to  make  it  clear  to  the  perverted 
world  that  the  individual  intellect  is  a  poor  instrument 
in  comparison  with  the  fathomless  problem  of  science,  so 
that  the  individual  must  circumscribe  his  efforts  within 
definite  limits ;  but  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  faculty  of 
cognition  of  the  human  race  is  as  full  of  possibilities,  as 
limitless,  as  fathomless  as  the  problem  which  nature  sets 
before  it  for  solution.  The  doctrine  of  mental  poverty, 
the  doctrine  of  the  limited  understanding  of  man  is  the 
last  remnant  of  the  religious  humbug.  Those  who,  on 


THE   LIMITS  OF   COGNITION  22? 

the  basis  of  the  Social-Democratic  program,  strive  to 
emancipate  the  working  class  through  the  workers  them- 
selves, must  entirely  divest  themselves  of  all  the  foolish 
expectations  and  hopes  and  philosophical  hairsplitting 
and  speculation  in  so  far  as  it  all  relates  to  another 
world. 

This  other  world  is  now  an  exploded  notion  with 
science  and  scientific  circles ;  there  is  only  that  portion  of 
it  left  which  deals  with  the  "  limits  of  cognition,"  and  as 
long  as  these  are  supposed  to  exist,  there  is  still  a 
higher  limitless  cognition  standing  behind,  and  there  is 
also  the  Inconceivable,  and  nobody  who  has  before  his 
eyes  that  phantom  will  ever  arrive  at  a  proper  appreci- 
ation of,  and  confidence  in,  human  energy  and  responsi- 
bility. 

To  transform  radically  the  present  immoral  world,  an 
energetic  consciousness  of  the  unlimited  faculty  of  cog- 
nition of  the  human  mind  is  required.  This  makes  it  im- 
perative that  we  should  place  all  talk  of  the  possibility  of 
a  "  higher  cognition  "  in  the  same  category  where  the 
bodies  of  the  Saints  stand  who,  indeed,  have  stomachs, 
but  need  no  food,  no  drink.  If  another  sort  of  cog- 
nition is  possible  than  the  one  which  is  commonly  called 
so,  then,  of  course,  flesh  and  blood  are  possible,  too, 
which  look,  taste  and  are  constituted  like  flour  and 
water.  In  short :  we  ought,  then,  to  become  Catholics, 
and  seek  our  salvation  in  prayer  and  not  in  active  work ; 
we  must  then  give  up  Social-Democracy. 

Our  anonymous  comrade  is  of  a  different  opinion. 
He  wants  to  take  up  the  cudgels  in  behalf  of  something 
inconceivable,  in  behalf  of  a  limited  human  cognition,  and 
yet  is  not  willing  to  stop  and  keep  to  those  limits.  Those 
who  really  believe  that  there  is  something  inconceivable 
must  and  will  keep  away  from  it  with  their  conception 


228  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

and  not  try  to  penetrate  further  and  inquire, —  else  they 
treat  the  supernatural  as  if  it  were  natural,  and  the  in- 
conceivable as  if  it  were  merely  not  yet  conceived.  An 
equation  like  this,  our  opponent  thinks,  is  merely  an  "  ex- 
ternal" one,  the  contradiction  only  a  superficial  one,  since 
it  indicates  only  that  the  human  mind,  which  involuntar- 
ily affects  that  equation,  is  reluctant  to  admit  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Inconceivable  and,  therefore,  pronounces  it 
merely  to  be  not  yet  conceived.  "  If  it  did  do  that ;  if. 
on  the  contrary,  it  were  to  accept  that  there  really  is 
something  inconceivable,  which  to  it  is  like  a  sealed  book, 
then  under  such  an  acquiescence  all  incentive  towards 
inquiry  would  be  lost  and  there  would  no  longer  be  any 
science." 

From  this  it  follows  that  man  has  two  minds :  one 
which  must  needs  have  something  inconceivable,  and 
another  which  must  needs  inquire  into  it.  As  against 
that  I  hold  that  the  time  has  arrived  when  the  human 
mind  must  be  taught  that  the  inconceivable  is  not  a  sub- 
ject for  science  and  that  scientific  inquiry  has  more  than 
enough  food  in  the  domain  of  things  yet  to  be  con- 
ceived. 

"  This,"  says  our  opponent,  "  is  really  nothing  but  the 
old  controversy  over  again  about  the  limits  of  human 
cognition, —  a  controversy  which  your  (the  Forward) 
correspondent  has  presented  in  a  way  of  his  own  with 
which  I  am  not  quite  in  sympathy.  "  Let  us  see,  then," 
he  continues,  "  whether  our  professors  of  Philosophy 
have  really  treated  this  point  so  badly  as  to  deserve  a 
curt  dismissal." 

"  The  one  who  first  carried  out  the  investigation  into 
the  limits  of  cognition  was  Kant.  However,  he  did  not 
proceed  beyond  the  '  Categories  of  Understanding/  and 
had  in  his  '  Practical  Reason '  to  assume  hypotheses 


THE   LIMITS   OF    COGNITION  22Q 

which  gave  his  system  a  contradictory  character.  It  was, 
however,  this  circumstance  in  his  system  which,  al- 
though the  limits  of  formal  cognition  had  been  defined 
sharply  enough,  made  further  progress  a  necessity.  And 
what  else  was  it  than  the  endeavor  to  conceive  the  in- 
conceivable, that  is  to  solve  the  inner  contradiction  of 
thinking?" 

"  Fichte  it  was  who  attempted  the  solution,  etc." 
"  Then  it  was  Hegel  who  came  nearer  to  the  incon- 
ceivable by  a  far  greater  step  by  demonstrating,  etc. 
.  .  .  He  showed  that,  in  order  to  understand  the 
World-Reason,  it  is  only  necessary  to  understand  our 
own  Reason.  This,  it  is  patent,  brought  the  Inconceiv- 
able appreciably  nearer  to  us.  And  when  we  thus  con- 
sider to  what  an  extent  those  three  philosophers  have 
advanced  our  scientific  understanding  by  attempting  to 
conceive  the  Inconceivable  we  must  take  some  care  not  to 
condemn  the  "  official "  Philosophy  and  to  give  her 
notice  to  quit." 

The  reply  of  the  Social-Democratic  philosophy  is  as 
follows :  It  never  thought  of  refusing  the  philosophers 
of  the  past  what  is  historically  due  to  them.  On  the 
contrary,  it  starts  from  the  premises  that  Kant,  Fichte 
and  Hegel  have  transformed  the  Inconceivable  (i.  e.,  the 
faculty  of  cognition)  into  the  Conceivable  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  time  has  at  last  arrived  when  we  can 
give  all  metaphysics  with  its  official  philosophers  notice 
to  quit, —  and  also  all  those  thinkers  who  fail  to  recog- 
nize this  important  achievement  and  do  not  cease  mak- 
ing an  Inconceivable  of  everything  which  is  not  yet  con- 
ceived. The  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  the  "  History 
of  Science,"  the  "  Logic,"  or  the  theory  of  cognition  has 
in  its  development  advanced  so  far  that  now  Social- 
Democracy  has  a  clear  knowledge  of  what  is  meant  by  to 


230  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

know,  and  we  may  well  speak  with  derision  of  those 
learned  capucines  who  place  above  the  knowledge  of 
nature  something  "  higher  "  still. 

Kant  is  said  to  have  "  sharply  enough  defined  the 
limits  of  formal  cognition."  This  is  precisely  what  we 
dispute  with  all  our  might  —  the  point  that  separates 
radically  the  Social-Democratic  philosophy  from  the 
official.  Kant  has  not  sharply  enough  defined  the 
limits  of  formal  cognition  because,  with  his  famous 
"  thing  in  itself,"  he  still  left  the  belief  in  another,  a 
higher  cognition,  in  a  superhuman  monster-mind. 
Formal  cognition  is  knowledge  of  Nature !  The  philoso- 
phers may  sigh  for  another  sort  of  knowledge,  but  they 
are,  before  all,  bound  to  give  us  some  indication  where  it 
is  to  be  found  and  how  it  is  constituted. 

Of  the  real  cognition,  the  one  which  is  in  daily  use, 
they  speak  contemptuously  like  the  ancient  Christians 
spoke  of  the  "  weak  flesh."  The  actual  world  is  for 
them  only  an  "  appearance  "  and  its  essence  a  mystery. 
Long  after  this  rotten  phrase  has  become  discredited  in 
other  branches  of  science,  the  fraud  is  still  being  perpe- 
trated in  the  theory  of  cognition.  Nobody  will  have  any 
other  sort  of  tin  than  natural  tin,  why  should  it  be  dif- 
ferent with  knowledge?  If  natural  science  is  content 
everywhere  with  the  phenomenon,  why  not  with  the 
phenomenology  of  mind  ?  Behind  the  "  Limits  of  formal 
cognition "  there  always  hovers  the  higher,  unlimited 
metaphysical  mind ;  behind  the  official  philosopher,  the 
theologian,  and  behind  both  of  them,  the  Inconceivable. 

And  when  Hegel  showed  that,  "  in  order  to  under- 
stand the  mind  of  the  world  it  is  only  necessary  to  under- 
stand our  own  mind,"  we  declare  ourselves  perfectly  in 
agreement.  Only  the  Social-Democracy  would  correct 


THE    LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  23! 

the  mystical  expression :  we  know  only  one  mind,  the 
human  mind  is  the  mind  of  the  world. 

"  But  what  is  this  Inconceivable  ?  "  asks  the  author 
of  the  letter  to  the  Vorw'drts.  "  When  we  are  forced  to 
acknowledge  that  every  scientific  attempt  to  conceive  it 
brings  us  appreciably  nearer  to  it,  are  we  not  bound  at 
the  same  time  to  believe  that  it  will  eventually  become 
the  Conceived?  Then  we  should  have  the  demand  of 
your  correspondent  fulfilled, —  not,  indeed,  in  his  way, 
but  in  that  of  official  philosophy.  To  this,  too,  the  official 
philosopher  has  his  reply,  namely,  that  "Being"  as  in 
a  state  of  absolute  rest,  can  by  no  means  be  resolved  into 
the  absolute  movement  of  thinking.  This  dictum,  says 
our  opponent,  defines  at  once  the  limits  of  knowledge, 
that  is,  the  Inconceivable.  Does  it  follow,  then,  that  we 
must  deny  its  existence,  and  that  we  must  keep  away 
from  it?  Surely  not.  Every  scientific  attempt  to  ap- 
proach it,  to  conceive  it,  or  even  to  formulate  the  prob- 
lem of  it,  leads  us  nearer  to  the  obscure  point  and  throws 
new  light  on  it,  though  it  may  never  bring  us  to  an  ab- 
solutely clear  vision  of  it.  And  the  pursuit  of  this  ob- 
ject is  the  business  of  philosophy  in  contradistinction  to 
natural  science  which  only  deals  with  facts  and  explains 
phenomena." 

Phenomena !    Of  course ! 

Thus  the  subject  of  philosophy,  the  Inconceivable,  is  a 
kind  of  a  bird  from  which  we  can  now  and  then  pluck 
out  a  feather  or  two,  but  are  unable  to  strip  it  to  the  skin, 
and  which  must  forever  remain  inconceivable.  If  we  ex- 
amine closely  the  feathers  which  the  philosophers  of  the 
past  have  already  plucked,  we  recognize  by  them  the 
sort  of  the  bird :  it  is  the  human  mind.  And  here  we  are 
again  at  the  decisive  point  which  separates  the  dialectic 
Materialists  from  the  pure  Idealists :  mind  is  to  us  a 


232  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

phenomenon  of  Nature,  while  Nature  is  to  them  a  phe- 
nomenon of  mind.  If  it  only  stopped  there!  But  no, 
there  lurks  in  the  background  the  malicious  intention  to 
promote  mind  to  an  "  entity,"  a  thing  of  a  higher  descent 
and  to  reduce  everything  else  to  a  platitude. 

We  are,  therefore,  bound  to  call  attention  to  the  fact, 
well  known  as  it  is  to  the  world  at  large,  that  not  only 
mind,  consciousness  or  apperception,  but  all  things  are 
"  in  the  last  resort  "  inconceivable. 

"  We  are  unable  to  conceive  the  atoms,  and  we  cannot 
explain  out  of  the  atoms  and  their  movement  the  slight- 
est phenomenon  of  consciousness,"  says  Lange  in  his 
"  History  of  Materialism,"  and  another  writer  also  says, 
"  the  nature  of  matter  is  absolutely  inconceivable."  And 
yet  we  continue  to  inquire  into  their  nature,  because  of 
our  need  of  causation  or,  as  it  is  also  called,  "  impulse 
towards  research,"  which,  in  its  irrepressible  way,  cannot 
help  plucking  feathers  even  from  the  Inconceivable. 

As  against  this  we  say :  that  which  allows  of  being  pos- 
sibly conceived  is  not  inconceivable.  Whoever  wants  to 
conceive  what  he  considers  inconceivable,  cannot  be  taken 
seriously.  Just  as  with  my  eye  I  can  only  perceive  the 
visible,  with  my  ear  hear  only  the  audible,  so  with  my 
faculty  of  conception  I  can  only  conceive  the  conceivable. 
And  when  the  Social-Democratic  philosophy  teaches 
that  everything  which  exists  can  be  perfectly  conceived, 
it  does  not  thereby  deny  the  Inconceivable  in  a  natural 
sense.  We  admit  the  same  as  the  naturally  invisible 
for  our  eyes;  we  only  object  to  that  double-dealing, 
shuffling  "  philosophical  "  sense  which  makes  the  Incon- 
ceivable again  conceivable  on  a  higher  plane.  We  are 
earnest  about  this  question,  we  know  of  no  higher  and 
other  cognition  than  the  ordinary  human  one,  we  know 
positively  that  our  understanding  is  truly  called  under- 


THE   LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  233 

standing,  and  there  can  as  much  or  little  be  any  other 
and  essentially  different  understanding  as  square  circles. 
We  place  the  intellect  among  the  ordinary  things  which 
cannot  change  their  nature  without  changing  their 
names. 

The  Social-Democratic  philosophy  agrees  with  the 
official  one  that  "  Being  can  by  no  means  be  resolved  into 
thinking  " —  not  even  a  particle  of  it.  But  neither  do  we 
regard  it  as  the  task  of  thinking  to  resolve  Being,  but 
merely  to  arrange,  to  order  it  formally  in  classes,  to  ex- 
plain its  rules  and  to  find  its  laws, —  in  short  to  arrive 
at  what  is  called  "  Knowledge  of  Nature."  Everything 
is  conceivable  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  classified,  everything 
is  inconceivable  in  so  far  as  it  cannot  be  entirely  reduced 
to  thought,  This  we  cannot,  must  not  and  have  no  wish 
to  do,  and  therefore  we  keep  away  from  it.  But  we  can 
very  well  do  the  reverse  —  namely,  to  reduce  thinking 
to  being,  i.  e.,  to  classify  the  faculty  of  thinking  as  one 
of  the  numerous  modes  of  existence. 

My  opponent  appeals  to  the  fact  that  Kant,  Fichte  and 
Hegel  have  come  nearer  to  the  Inconceivable  by  a  few 
steps.  But  what  those  philosophers  have  grasped  was 
nothing  inconceivable,  but  merely  the  conceivable  portion 
of  the  intellect  or  the  "  formal  cognition."  We  only  go 
a  little  step  further  and  conceive  the  intellect  as  totally 
a  formal  instrument  which  can  only  perform  in  the 
theory  of  cognition  what  it  practises  in  natural  science. 
With  us  science  is  a  homogeneous  species  of  which  phil- 
osophy and  knowledge  of  nature  are  varieties, —  both  ob- 
serve "  given  facts  "  or  explain  "  phenomena."  We  find 
intellect  to  be  as  much  empirical  as  matter.  Thinking 
and  being,  subject  and  object  exist  in  the  domain  of  ex- 
perience. To  characterize  one  of  these -natural  objects 
as  absolute  rest  and  the  other  as  absolute  motion  is,  since 


234  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

natural  science  has  reduced  everything  to  motion,  no 
more  permissible.  What  our  comrade  said  of  the  In- 
conceivable—  namely,  that  every  scientific  attempt  leads 
us  a  step  nearer  to  the  obscure  point,  though  we  can 
never  gain  an  absolutely  clear  vision  of  it, —  is  also  true, 
without  mystification,  of  every  object  of  natural  science, 
of  the  inconceived.  Also  knowledge  of  Nature  has  its 
unlimited  objective;  even  without  mystic  limits  we  ap- 
proach the  obscure  point  ever  nearer  and  nearer  without 
ever  bringing  it  within  full  vision.  That  means  simply 
that  science,  like  nature,  has  no  limits. 

Granted,  however,  that  impulse  towards  enquiry  is  in- 
herent in  man,  it  cannot  be  denied  that,  in  order  to  use 
this  impulse  rationally,  one  must  properly  understand  it. 
The  rational  impulse  towards  enquiry  tends  to  a  certain 
systematic  arrangement  of  existence,  i.  e.,  to  find  out  the 
laws  of  existence.  If  it  exhibits  the  tendency  to  go  be- 
yond existence,  it  must  go  beyond  itself,  beyond  all 
nature.  With  such  aspirations  Philosophy  necessarily 
overshoots  itself  and  falls  into  extravagance  which  it 
inherited  from  religion.  Philosophy  and  religion  miss 
the  "  final  causes  "  of  all  conceivableness :  namely,  the 
empirical,  the  fact;  our  thoughts  should  be  based  on 
sense-perceptions,  on  experiences.  Those  who,  on  the 
contrary,  wish  to  base  fact  on  mind  or  logic  must  under- 
stand this  merely  in  a  formal  sense.  The  last  cause  why 
the  stone  falls  or  heat  expands  is  the  fact,  and  the  law 
of  gravitation  and  the  law  of  expansion  are  abstractions 
or  formal  reasons.  Not  only  can  Being  not  be  resolved 
into  Thinking,  but  even  the  philosophic  aspiration  to  do 
so  is  a  pure-ideological  overstraining. 

Just  as  man  is  possessed  by  the  impulse  to  know 
everything,  so  he  possesses  also  the  impulse  to  see 
everything.  Well,  here  is  a  pane  of  glass  which  is  quite 


THE   LIMITS   OF   COGNITION 


235 


transparent.  Yet  it  is  not  all  transparent.  Its  specific 
gravity  or  degree  of  solidity  cannot  be  seen;  its  quality 
to  emit  a  sound  can  only  be  heard,  etc.  Precisely  the 
same  with  the  organ  of  knowledge :  we  are  able  to  know 
everything  completely,  yet  along  with  this  everything  is 
something  more  than  knowable,  and  this  fact  that  Being 
cannot  be  resolved  into  thinking  can  be  a  matter  of  lam- 
entation only  to  the  fantastic  dreamer.  If  we  could  know 
of  any  one  -thing  absolutely  everything,  then  knowledge 
would  be  all  and  the  object  nothing.  Knowledge  and 
nothing  left  to  know !  Light  and  nothing  left  to  see ! 
Then  it  would  be  like  of  yore  when  nothing  was  — "  and 
the  earth  was  without  form,  and  void." 


OUR  PROFESSORS  ON  THE  LIMITS  OF  COG- 
NITION. 

(VoR  WARTS,  1878.) 
I 

At  the  "  Fiftieth  Meeting  of  German  Naturalists  and 
Physicians,"  held  at  Munich,  September,  1877,  Pro- 
fessor C.  V.  Niigeli,  of  Munich,  took  up  a  well  known 
lecture  of  his  Berlin  colleague,  Du  Bois-Reymond,  and  de- 
livered a  remarkable  address  on  the  "  Limits  of  Scientific 
Knowledge."  One  is  bound  to  admit  that  the  Munich 
professor  has,  in  point  of  truth  and  clearness,  far  sur- 
passed his  Berlin  colleague ;  still  he,  too,  was  unable  to 
rise  to  the  level  of  his  time. 

He  nearly  explained  the  whole  thing;  but  the  small 
point  which  he  missed  at  the  conclusion  is  just  the  vital 
point, —  the  one  which  marks  the  wide  gulf  that  divides 
physics  from  metaphysics,  sober  science  from  romantic 
belief.  Such  a  lecture,  proceeding  as  it  does  sharply  up 
to  that  point,  offers  a  welcome  opportunity  to  show  once 
more  the  superiority  of  the  Social-Democratic  conception 
of  the  world. 

Prof.  Nageli  treats  his  subject  in  the  following  man- 
ner :  "  Many  methodical  scientists  who,  by  their  exact 
mode  of  research,  augment  the  stock  of  well  based  facts, 
while  holding  a  fundamental  solution  inadmissible, 
answer  the  question  as  to  the  Limits  of  Knowledge  of 
Nature  by  a  simple  statement  of  fact :  '  Belief  invariably 
begins  where  knowledge  ends.'  The  statement  that  our 

236 


PROFESSORS   AND    LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  237 

belief  begins  where  knowledge  ends  —  the  lecturer  con- 
tinues —  is  a  practical  solution  for  certain  definite  pur- 
poses. Our  interest  is  not  satisfied  thereby.  We  turn 
our  special  attention  to  the  theoretical  side  of  the  prob- 
lem. We  want  to  know  whether  the  limits  where  human 
knowledge  must  stop  are  at  all  definable,  and  if  so,  how 
far  can  knowledge  penetrate  into  the  domain  of  Nature ; 
how  much  of  Nature  could  the  human  mind  conceive,  if 
it  were  to  occupy  itself  during  an  unlimited  time  —  say, 
an  eternity  —  with  natural  sciences  and  have  at  its  com- 
mand all  imaginable  means  of  research, —  in  a  word, 
what  is  the  fundamental  line  of  demarkation  between  the 
domain  of  knowledge  and  that  of  belief  ?  " 

As  is  well  known,  his  predecessor,  Du  Bois-Reymond, 
tried  to  prove  that  there  really  is  such  an  impassable  line 
of  demarkation,  that  consequently  belief  will,  under  all 
circumstances,  have  a  domain  of  its  own  left  to  it.  It  is 
only  owing  to  the  reservation  of  this  little  refuge  for 
religious  romanticism  that  his  lecture  has  gained  its 
seeming  importance  and  popularity.  Since  that  time  the 
champions  of  the  Inconceivable  have  not  ceased  singing 
Hosanna.  True  enough,  Prof.  Nageli  is  little  edified  by 
this  song,  but  his  official  privileged  position  as  a  pro- 
fessor does  not  allow  him  to  enter  the  fight  in  a  whole- 
hearted manner.  After  showing  his  predecessor  clearly 
and  by  all  manner  of  means  that  he  has  misunderstood 
the  nature  of  scientific  knowledge,  he  concludes  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Du  Bois-Reymond  winds  up  his  lecture  with 
the  crushing  words,  Igiwramus  and  Ignorabimus.  I 
should  like  to  conclude  mine  with  the  qualified,  but 
withal,  consoling  expression  of  opinion  that  the  fruit  of 
our  researches  is  not  merely  knowledge,  but  actual  truth 
which  contains  within  itself  the  germ  of  an  almost  ( !) 
infinite  growth,  without  thereby  coming  nearer  by  the 


238  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

smallest  step  to  omniscience.  If  we  adopt  an  attitude  of 
a  reasonable  resignation,  if  we,  as  finite  and  transient 
beings  that  we  are,  content  ourselves  with  human 
knowledge  instead  of  claiming  divine  cognition,  then  we 
may  say  with  full  confidence  in  ourselves  and  in  the 
future :  '  We  know  and  we  shall  know.'  " 

These  concluding  remarks  contain  the  essence  of  the 
question.  They  also  unmistakably  express  both  the  re- 
ligious and  subservient  consciousness  of  the  Berlin  pro- 
fessor and  the  tame  and  timid  inconsistency  of  the 
Munich  one.  The  religious  romanticism  of  Du  Bois- 
Reymond  calls  all  results  of  scientific  research  "  merely 
knowledge,"  and  not  "  real  truth."  Such  true  cognition 
is  not  attainable  by  the  poor  human  understanding.  The 
professor  literally  says  that  "  the  whole  of  our  knowledge 
of  Nature  is  in  reality  not  cognition,  but  a  substitute  of 
an  interpretation." 

Our  science,  then,  can  only  yield  chicory  instead  of 
coffee.  Our  scientific  interpretation  may  very  well  allow 
itself  to  be  buried,  perhaps  it  may  rise  transfigured  on 
the  day  of  judgment.  And  such  reactionary  word- 
splitting  wants  to  dominate  our  universities! 

Then  comes  the  other  one,  Nageli,  to  whom  that  pious 
resignation  seems  rather  too  strong.  The  nice  distinc- 
tion between  knowledge  and  cognition  does  not  recom- 
mend itself  to  him.  He  is  convinced  that  "  we  know 
and  shall  know."  But  observe  how  gently  he  breaks  this 
news  to  us :  "  without  thereby  coming  nearer  to  omni- 
science by  the  smallest  step."  He,  too  speaks  humbly  of 
"  human  "  cognition  as  against  that  of  the  higher  Non- 
Humanity.  We  must  submit  to  a  "  rational  "  resigna- 
tion and  lay  no  claim  to  "  divine  knowledge."  Is  it 
possible  that  so  learned  a  professor  should  "  resign  "  him- 
self monklike  to  divine  cognition  and  even  call  such  resig- 


PROFESSORS   AND    LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  239 

nation  rational?  All  natural  cognition  is  divine,  that  is, 
glorious  and  wonderful.  When,  however,  our  professor 
opposes  to  human  cognition  a  divine  one,  then  he  pro- 
ceeds beyond  the  limits  of  Nature  and  lands  in  the  same 
romanticism  in  which  his  predecessor  has  landed  before 
him. 

II 

The  Munich  professor  has  clearly  shown  to  his  Berlin 
colleague  that  by  not  recognizing  our  knowledge  of 
Nature  as  a  real,  true  cognition,  he  demonstrated  not  the 
limits,  but  the  inanity  or  absolute  impossibility  of  scien- 
tific cognition.  And,  consequently,  he  stands  at  a  purely 
negative  point  of  view.  According  to  Nageli,  Du  Bois- 
Reymond  teaches  as  follows : 

1.  Cognition  of  Nature  is  the  reduction  of  a  natural 
phenomenon     to    the    mechanics    of   simple,     indivisible 
atoms. 

2.  Atoms  in  this  sense  do  not  exist  and,  consequently, 
no  real  cognition  exists. 

3.  Even  if  the  world  could  be  understood  out  of  the 
mechanics  of  the  atoms  we  would  still  be  unable  to  under- 
stand out  of  these  atoms  apperception  and  consciousness. 

On  this  Nageli  justly  remarks :  "  Since  the  speaker 
does  not  proceed  beyond  mere  negation,  natural  science 
cannot,  in  its  lack  of  a  proper  domain,  draw  its  limits 
either, —  and  if  it  is  for  ever  unable  to  gain  an  insight 
even  in  the  material  phenomena,  it  matters  little  whether 
it  may  possibly  lay  claim  to  the  spiritual  domain."  In 
other  words,  if  our  knowledge  yields  instead  of  coffee 
only  chicory,  then  we  only  have  one  bad  brew  and  noth- 
ing else.  There  is  nothing  good  left  which  it  would  be 
worth  while  to  investigate,  to  understand  or  to  place 
within  its  proper  limits. 


240  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

After  one  professor  has  thus  settled  the  other,  the 
pleasant  duty  remains  for  us  to  show,  what,  however, 
must  be  clear  already,  that  the  Munich  professor,  too, 
has  landed  where  the  other  one  was  caught.  Herr  Nageli 
differs  from  Du  Bois-Reymond  in  that  he  has  so  far 
broken  loose  that  it  is  difficult  to  judge  whether  it  was 
because  his  strength  has  failed  him  or  on  account  of 
decorum,  that  he  felt  himself  obliged  to  keep  to  the 
"  mysterious  land  of  presentiment,"  to  the  "  divine  cog- 
nition and  omniscience "  and  such  like  things  which 
"  surpass  our  human  faculties." 

"  As  regards  the  faculty  of  the  Ego  to  know  of  natural 
things,  the  decisive  and  undoubted  fact  is  that,  however 
our  faculty  of  thinking  is  constituted,  only  the  sensory 
perception  offers  us  any  knowledge  of  Nature.  If  we 
did  not  see  and  hear,  did  not  taste,  smell  or  touch  any- 
thing we  could  not  altogether  know  that  something  exists 
outside  us, —  nay,  that  we  ourselves  are  corporeal." 

These  are  brave  words.  Let  us  adhere  to  them  and 
see  whether  our  professor  sticks  to  them  also. 

Our  sensory  perception,  says  our  lecturer,  is  limited  to 
the  present.  "  We  cannot  in  a  direct  way  perceive  what 
was  in  the  past  and  what  will  be  in  the  future,  nor  what 
is  too  distant  in  space  nor  what  is  too  small  or  too  large 
in  dimension." 

Quite  so.  But  what  one  man  did  not  see  yesterday 
another  one  will  see  to-morrow.  Where  the  distances 
are  too  great  and  the  dimensions  too  small,  there  we  call 
to  our  assistance  the  telescope  and  the  miscroscope. 
"  Thus  it  is  possible,  theoretically  speaking,  for  the 
human  organism  to  get  bodily  impressions  of  all  phe- 
nomena in  Nature.  But  how  does  it  stand  in  reality? 
What  impressions  are  powerful  enough  to  be  noticeable 


PROFESSORS   AND    LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  24! 

to  us  and  what  are  insignificant  enough  to  pass  by  un- 
noticed ?  " 

We  are  not  going  to  follow  the  lecturer  in  all  his  de- 
tails, but  will  readily  acknowledge  what  always  has  to  be 
acknowledged,  "  Our  faculty  to  get  direct  perception  of 
Nature  through  the  senses  is  limited  in  two  respects. 
We  probably  ( !)  lack  the  perception  for  whole  domains 
of  Nature  (is  it  for  that  of  goblins,  ghosts  and  the  like? 
J.  D.)  and  so  far  as  we  possess  it,  it  merely  embraces  in 
time  and  space  an  insignificant  portion  of  the  whole." 
(Yes,  Nature  surpasses  the  human  mind,  it  is  an  inex- 
haustible object,  J.  D.)  "Of  the  constitution,  proper- 
ties, history  of  a  fixed  star  of  the  last  magnitude,  of  the 
organic  life  on  its  obscure  satellites,  of  the  material  and 
spiritual  movements  in  those  organisms  —  of  all  that  we 
shall  never  know  anything." 

Here,  again,  our  professor  goes  too  far.  Our  faculty 
of  research  is  only  limited  in  so  far  as  its  object,  Nature, 
is  unlimited.  We  cannot  arrive  at  any  end,  simply  be- 
cause there  is  no  end.  But  where  there  is  an  end,  there 
we  may  possibly  arrive.  No  professor  can  tell  how  much 
of  the  fixed  stars  and  their  satellites  we  and  our  suc- 
cessors may  yet  find  out,  how  infinitely  deep  we  may  yet 
penetrate  into  the  past,  into  the  future  and  into  the  small- 
est particles,  since,  as  Nageli  himself  says,  we  have 
"  theoretically  "  speaking,  every  possibility  for  that.  We 
know  that  no  explorer  will  ever  find  two  mountains  with- 
out a  valley,  no  cutter  will  ever  make  a  knife  without  a 
blade  and  handle,  for  these  are  all  theoretical  impossibili- 
ties. But  what  results  practice  will  still  achieve  —  to  de- 
termine that  in  advance,  after  the  spectral  analysis  and 
the  invention  of  the  telephone,  is  surely  a  piece  of  im- 
pertinence. 


242  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

III 

Inquiry  never  arrives  at  an  end  —  neither  objectively 
nor  subjectively ;  neither  the  infinity  of  the  world,  nor  the 
infinity  of  the  intellect  admit  of  an  end;  that,  however, 
the  intellect  is  but  a  limited  portion  of  the  world,  no 
Social-Democratic  materialist  will  ever  deny.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  precisely  he  who  scientifically  conceived 
the  thinking  faculty  as  an  instrument,  quality,  product  or 
part  of  Nature.  We  are  not  animated  to  such  a  pre- 
sumptuous extent  by  mind  as  to  ascribe  to  it  every 
capacity  and  every  faculty.  We  only  wish  —  what  our 
professor  wished,  but  could  not  achieve  —  we  only  wish 
to  escape  from  dualism.  We  can  only  acknowledge  one 
solitary  world  —  the  one  "  of  which  we  obtain  knowledge 
through  the  sensory  perception."  We  keep  Nageli  to  his 
word,  namely,  where  we  do  not  see  or  hear  or  feel  or 
taste  or  smell  anything,  there  we  can  not  know  any- 
thing either. 

I  wish  to  return  once  more  in  a  positive  manner  to  the 
perceptibly  limited  nature  of  human  cognition.  With 
this  faculty  we  can  only  knoiv;  to  sing,  to  jump  and  to 
do  a  hundred  other  things  with  it  we  cannot ;  in  so  far 
reason  is  limited.  But  in  its  own  element,  in  cognition, 
it  is  unlimited,  and  so  unlimited  that  it  never  comes  to  an 
end  with  its  work. 

To  go  on.  Everything  knowable  is  open  to  it.  The 
unknowable,  that  which  is  absolutely  inaccessible  to  the 
senses,  is  for  us  non-existent ;  it  is  also  "in  itself  "  non- 
existent insofar  as  we  cannot  even  speak  of  it  without 
drawing  upon  the  fanciful. 

"  Our  senses  are  just  organized  for  the  needs  of  com- 
mon life,  but  not  in  order  to  satisfy  our  mental  need, 
and  to  give  us  knowledge  of  all  phenomena  of  Nature. 


PROFESSORS   AND   LIMITS   OF    COGNITION  243 

.  .  .  Just  as  we  came  to  know  something  about  the 
electrical  phenomena  which  have  their  seat  in  every  par- 
ticle of  matter,  so  there  may  be  yet  other  natural  forces, 
other  moleculer  forces  of  motion  of  which  we  do  not  get 
any  sensory  impression,  because  they  never  unite  into  an 
observable  sum,  and  therefore  remain  hidden  from  us." 

We  reply :  Those  who  have  the  '  mental  need  '  to  know 
something  of  phenomena  '  which  remain  hidden  from  us,' 
and  must  remain  hidden  according  to  our  Nature,  have 
not  a  mental  need,  but  a  mystical  need.  The  electrical 
phenomena  have  no  more  been  discovered  by  accident 
than  America  was.  And  what  a  strange  Columbus  a 
scientist  must  be  to  speak  of  phenomena  which  nobody 
ever  perceived  or  will  perceive.  It  is  possible  that 
Mephistopheles  should  hover  about  me  in  the  form  of 
an  invisible  rearmouse;  but  what  I  don't  know  leaves 
me  cool  and  ought  also  to  leave  cool  every  natural 
philosopher. 

Nageli  says :  "  The  natural  philosopher  must  well  be 
aware  that  his  inquiry  is  confined  in  all  respects  by  finite 
limits,  that  on  all  sides  he  is  categorically  bidden  to  halt 
by  the  unknowable  eternity.  That  this  has  not  always 
been  understood,  that  the  infinitely  great  and  the  in- 
finitely small  have  been  mistaken  for  the  endless  and  noth- 
ing, has  often  led  to  erroneous  ideas.  Such  are  the  er- 
roneous theories  of  the  physical  atoms  as  the  infinitely 
small,  and  of  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  world  as  the 
infinitely  great." 

The  consciousness  of  the  limits  of  research  may, 
eventually,  be  useful  to  the  scientific  inquirer.  Still  our 
professor  ought  not  to  have  forgotten  that  rational  doc- 
trine in  the  very  same  breath  in  which  he  propounded  it. 
This  he  does  when  saying  that  "  on  all  sides  we  are  cate- 
gorically ordered  to  halt  by  the  unknowable  eternity." 


244  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

How  can  one  know  anything  about  this  '  halt '  when  it  is 
unknowable?  Or  is  Nageli,  like  Du  Bois,  perhaps,  un- 
able to  escape  from  the  mere  negation?  Can  he,  too, 
only  tell  of  the  great  halting-point  of  the  '  eternal,'  that 
nothing  can  be  known  about  it  ? 

Nageli  continues.  "This  is  not  to  say  that  the  scien- 
tist must  not  philosophise,  that  he  must  not  enter  the 
domain  of  the  ideal  and  transcendental.  But  he  ceases 
to  be  a  scientist,  and  the  use  he  can  make  .of  his  own 
profession  is  to  keep  the  two  domains  strictly  apart,  that 
he  treats  the  one  as  the  real  domain  of  research  and 
knowledge,  and  the  other,  freed  as  it  is  of  all  finite,  as 
the  occult  domain  of  presentiment." 

Our  good  professor  knows  the  philosophers  badly  if  he 
thinks  that  they  will  content  themselves  with  the  '  occult 
domain  of  presentiment/  Not  only  the  Social-Democrat, 
but  also  many  '  official '  philosophers,  claim  that  although 
their  domain  be  hidden  from  the  Munich  professor,  it  is 
still  open  to  '  human  understanding,'  and  that  all '  divine 
cognition '  must  be  rigorously  excluded  from  it.  The 
occult  domain  or  the  metaphysical  world  beyond  is  not 
nearer  Philosophy  than  to  the  other  pure  ideologists  who 
seek  each  and  every  one  to  find  some  snug  corner  for 
their  shrines.  With  science  these  conservative  endeavors 
have  nothing  to  do ;  they  belong  to  the  domain  of  prac- 
tice. On  the  other  hand,  there  is  much  more  that  be- 
longs to  the  domain  of  exact  science  than  those  gentle- 
men are  at  all  inclined  to  admit.  They  consider  the  con- 
ception of  Nature  in  too  vague  a  fashion.  If  it  cannot  be 
disputed  that  History,  Economics,  Politics,  etc.,  ought  to 
develop  into  exact  sciences,  nay,  are  already  in  a  fair  way 
to  do  so  and  have  already  partially  done  so,  then  Social- 
Democracy  can  also  prove  that  the  gulf  between  Phi- 
losophy and  Science  has  already  been  bridged  over  with- 


PROFESSORS  AND   LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  245 

out  the  bourgeois   geniuses  getting  the  slightest  wind 
of  it. 

Professor  Steinthal  has  gone  in  this  respect  further 
than  his  scientific  colleagues.  In  the  third  edition  of  his 
book,  "  The  Origin  of  Speech,"  he  says :  "  Speaking  is 
not  thinking,  but  the  means,  the  organ  of  thinking,"  and 
"  no  mind  is  without  speech  (designation)  ;  speech  itself 
already  belongs  to  the  domain  of  mind."  Continuing 
this  train  of  thought  we  argue:  Speech  lends  our  ideas 
their  true  designation.  What  speech  designates  as 
Nature,  truth,  knowledge  and  tin  is  really  and  truly  tin, 
knowledge,  truth  and  Nature.  Steinthal  teaches  us  on 
this  point  as  follows :  A  only  equals  A  and  never  B,  if 
'  equal '  is  not  taken  in  the  mathematical  sense  of  being 
equal  in  magnitude.  But  if  '  equal '  means  equality  in 
essence,  then  A  equalling  B,  B  must  be  A,  and  we  have 
no  right  to  call  it  otherwise  than  A.  Steinthal  calls  this 
"  the  principle  of  research  and  knowledge."  In  other 
words  unity,  unity  in  conception  and  name  is  the  first 
condition  of  science.  All  dualism  is  untenable.  If 
divine  knowledge  =  A,  and  human  knowledge  =  B,  that 
is,  if  both  are  essentially  different,  then  we  simply  juggle 
with  the  word  knowledge  in  a  dualistic  manner.  Just  as 
all  mankind,  in  spite  of  the  different  races,  make  but  one 
species,  so  necessarily  is  there  in  spite  of  the  diverse 
kinds  but  one  knowledge,  one  truth,  one  Nature, —  the 
true  Nature,  the  natural  truth.  And  everything  we  get 
to  know  in  heavens,  on  earth  and  in  other  places  belongs 
to  the  same  category.  And  what  we  do  not  get  to  know 
and  of  which  only  the  parson  and  the  professor  tell  us, — 
is  mere  jugglery,  which,  however,  belongs  to  the  natural 
truth,  that  is,  true  jugglery. 


246  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

IV. 

Nothing  more  is  meant  by  these  deductions  than  this : 
the  world  is  a  unity,  that  is,  there  is  only  one  world.  And 
whoever  wants  to  pass  over  to  another  world  —  from 
that  of  experience  to  that  of  presentiment  or  divinity, — 
nay,  whoever  merely  speaks  of  it,  is  either  a  '  crank  '  or  a 
scamp  or  a  deceiver  of  the  people.  To  have  the  right 
to  stigmatise  an  opponent  with  one  of  these  bad  names 
no  further  proof  is  required  than  that  he  contradicts  the 
"  wants  of  Reason  for  unity." 

When  Nageli  tries  to  impose  upon  his  colleagues  at 
the  meeting  of  scientists  the  belief  that  our  intellect  has, 
or,  perhaps,  has  outside  of  the  bounds  of  its  own  nature 
yet  other,  supernatural  or  unnatural  limits,  he  performs 
thereby  a  scandalous  trick,  the  more  scandalous,  in  fact, 
the  further  he  has  progressed  in  the  conception  that 
Nature  represents  an  organic  whole  where  no  gulf  could 
be  found. 

"  Our  knowledge  of  Nature  is  thus  always  a  mathe- 
matical one  and  is  based  either  on  simple  measurement, 
such  as  in  morphological  and  descriptive  sciences,  or  on 
a  measurement  of  causation  as  in  physical  and  physiologi- 
cal sciences.  But  with  the  assistance  of  mathematics,  of 
measure,  weight  and  number  only  relative  or  quantitative 
differences  can  be  understood  .  .  .  Real  qualita- 
tive differences  we  cannot  determine  since  qualities  can- 
not be  compared.  This  is  an  important  fact  for  the 
knowledge  of  Nature.  It  follows  from  this  fact  that  if 
there  are  in  Nature  qualitatively  or  absolutely  different 
domains,  scientific  knowledge  is  only  possible  in  an  iso- 
lated way  within  the  bounds  of  each  of  them,  and  no  con- 
necting bridge  leads  from  one  domain  into  another.  But 
from  the  same  fact  also  follows  that  in  so  far  as  we  can 


PROFESSORS   AND   LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  247 

investigate  Nature  connectedly,  in  so  far  as  our  measur- 
ing knowledge  proceeds  in  a  consistent,  uninterrupted 
way,  and  as  we  come  to  an  understanding  of  one 
phenomenon  by  means  of  another  .  .  .  absolute 
differences,  impassable  gulfs  do  not  exist  in  Nature  at 
all." 

This  passage  shows  how  very  near  our  Munich  pro- 
fessor came  to  a  right  and  complete  conception  of  the 
nature  of  knowledge.  It  is  only  wanted  to  dot  the  i's 
and  to  cross  the  t's.  This  little  thing  however,  is  of  in- 
finite importance,  since  without  it  one  always  slides  back 
into  the  intolerable  error  of  wishing  to  formulate  ab- 
solute or  qualitative  differences,  to  separate  by  an  im- 
passible gulf  the  finite  and  infinite  or  the  human  and 
divine  knowledge,  and  to  describe  two  domains  without  a 
connecting  bridge. 

This  dualistic  scandal  must  once  for  all  be  put  an  end 
to  by  going  one  little  step  further  than  Nageli.  The 
faculty  of  cognition  must  be  recognised  as  the  faculty 
which  embraces  all  differences,  all  qualities  as  a  unity, 
as  one  solitary  quantity.  It  is  rational  means :  reason 
makes  of  all  existence  one  order.  To  enroll  under  this 
order  all  the  phenomena  of  the  world  as  different  species, 
is  to  know  Nature.  Because  the  intellect  can  do  this, 
because  it  divides  everything  into  orders  and  species,  into 
subjects  and  predicates  so  that  finally  only  one  order  re- 
mains, only  one  subject,  Being  or  the  Given  Promises  of 
which  mind  and  body,  reason,  fancy,  matter,  force,  etc., 
are  predicates  or  species, —  because  of  that  there  cannot 
possibly  remain  in  the  world  any  impassable  gulf.  Every- 
thing must  reduce  itself  to  a  theoretical  harmony,  to  one 
system. 

As  soon  as  this  i  is  dotted,  it  becomes  no  longer  pos- 
sible to  talk  grandiloquently  that  there  can  be  an  absolute 


248  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

difference  or  impassable  gulf  between  the  inorganic  and 
organic,  between  plant,  animal,  ape,  man,  mental  and 
manual  work,  etc.  One  must  know  that  two  drops  of 
water  are  just  as  infinitely  different  as  animal  and  man, 
as  body  and  soul,  and  that  separation  and  differentiation 
are  just  as  little  limited  as  "  striving  after  unity." 

I  should  like  to  make  the  reader  understand  what  the 
professors,  so  far  as  I  know  them,  have  not  yet  under- 
stood, viz.,  that  our  intellect  is  a  dialectical  instrument, 
an  instrument  which  reconciles  all  opposites.  The  in- 
tellect creates  unity  by  means  of  the  variety  and  com- 
prehends the  difference  in  the  equality.  Hegel  has  made 
it  clear  long  ago  that  in  science  there  is  no  either  —  or, 
but  as  well  as.  The  faculty  of  knowledge  in  the  ape,  the 
rustic  and  the  scientist  is  just  of  the  same  category  as 
that  in  the  philosopher,  and  also  the  most  divine  know- 
ledge belongs  to  the  same  category,  and  are  all  forms  of 
one  variety,  varieties  of  one  order,  predicates  of  one  sub- 
ject. It  is  certainly  admissible  to  distinguish  between 
the  human  and  the  animal  intellect,  to  raise  the  former 
to  the  skies  and  give  it  a  different  name.  But  it  is  just  as 
inadmissible  to  create  an  impassable  gulf  between  reason 
and  instinct.  If  we  reason  soberly  and  do  not  indulge  in 
extravagant  exclamations  we  are  bound  to  recognise  that 
the  faculty  of  discrimination  separates  infinitely  but  also 
connects  endlessly. 

Nageli  says :  "  It  is  a  logical  necessity  for  the 
scientist  to  allow  in  the  finite  Nature  only  gradual  dis- 
tinctions." Our  reply  to  this  is :  it  is  a  logical  necessity 
to  throw  the  infinite  and  the  finite  into  the  same  heap, 
that  is  to  conceive  of  Nature  as  a  unity  which  is  both 
finite  and  infinite. 

"  But  what  is  the  world  which  is  dominated  by  the 
human  mind  ?  Not  even  a  grain  of  sand  in  the  eternity  of 


PROFESSORS   AND    LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  249 

space,  not  even  a  second  in  the  eternity  of  time,  but  is  an 
outwork  of  the  true  essence  of  the  All."  That's  exactly 
the  language  of  the  parson.  And  it  is  quite  true,  if  it  is 
only  meant  as  an  emphatic  expression  of  sentiment  in 
view  of  the  greatness  of  existence ;  but  is  also  very  in- 
sipid, if  the  professor  takes  it  to  mean  that  our  space  andk 
our  time  were  not  part  and  parcel  of  the  infinite  and 
eternal, —  very  insipid,  if  it  is  meant  to  express  that  the 
'  true  essence  of  the  All '  is  hidden  beyond  the  phenomena 
in  the  infathomable  region  of  metaphysics  or  religion. 
The  All  is  to  be  found  in  its  moments,  and  to  seek  it  else- 
where is  a  task  which  Social-Democrats  willingly  leave 
to  the  ruling  classes. 

V. 

After  Prof.  Nageli  had  thus  tried  to  curb  our  scientific 
knowledge  of  Nature  his  example  was  followed  at  the 
same  meeting  by  Prof.  Virchow  in  order  to  restrict  still 
further  the  "  freedom  of  science  in  the  modern  State." 
His  eyes  are  so  sensitive  that  they  cannot  stand  even  the 
feeble  light  which  Na'geli  had  put  up. 

"  I  should  like  to  prove  to  you  that  we  have  arrived 
at  a  point  where  we  must  make  it  our  special  business  to 
moderate  ourselves  and  to  renounce  to  a  certain  extent 
our  predilections  and  personal  views  so  as  to  keep  up  the 
good  temper  which  the  nation  still  exhibits  towards  us." 

What  a  miserable  "  nation  "  this  is,  whose  good  temper 
the  professor  desires  to  preserve,  will  prove  no  puzzle  to 
our  comrades.  We  recognise  the  well-to-do  by  this  mere 
predilection  for  the  moderation  of  others,  by  their  sensi- 
tiveness to  everything  which  may  interfere  with  their 
digestion. 

"  It  goes  without  saying  that  we  must  demand  for 
everything  which  we  consider  to  be  well  established  scien- 


25O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

tific  truth  complete  adoption  in  the  national  store  of 
knowledge ;  this  the  nation  must  absorb, —  this  it  must 
consume  and  digest." 

Our  professor  is  right;  there  are  some  truths  which 
are  too  patent  to  allow  of  being  hushed  up,  and  there 
are  others  which  can  serve  the  revolutionary  tendencies 
and  must,  therefore  be  "  moderated,"  though  science  un- 
mistakably gravitates  to  them. 

"  We  cannot  proceed  to  explain  to  every  yokel :  this 
is  true,  established  by  fact,  this  is  fairly  known  and  that 
is  only  a  conjecture.  .  .  .  We  must  abstain  from 
putting  into  the  heads  of  our  schoolmasters  what  we 
merely  conjecture.  .  .  .  After  all,  this  theory  of 
evolution,  too,  when  consistently  carried  to  its  logical 
conclusion,  has  some  very  dangerous  aspects,  and  it  will 
not  have  escaped  your  attention,  I  hope,  that  Social- 
Democracy  has  taken  cognizance  of  it." 

This  hardly  requires  any  comment.  One  needs  only 
listen  to  the  man  to  perceive  at  once  how  it  stands  with 
the  "  Freedom  of  science  in  the  modern  State."  Knowl- 
edge must  naturally  be  still  more  restricted  by  Virchow 
than  it  was  by  his  colleague,  Nageli. 

"  In  thus  narrowing  the  limits  of  our  knowledge  we 
must  remember  above  all  that  what  is  commonly  called 
natural  science  is  like  all  other  knowledge  in  the  world 
made  up  of  three  heterogeneous  elements.  Usually  we 
merely  distinguish  between  objective  and  subjective 
knowledge.  Yet  we  have  still  a  third,  a  sort  of  medium 
element,  namely,  that  of  belief,  which,  as  you  know,  also 
exists  in  science." 

This  subtle  distinction  which  the  artful  dodger,  for  the 
sake  of  his  reputation,  thereupon  draws  between  scien- 
tific and  religious  belief,  need  not  be  taken  seriously,  but 
the  ingenious  way  in  which  he  scents  the  weak  points  of 


PROFESSORS  AND   LIMITS  OF   COGNITION  25! 

his  predecessor  deserves  some  acknowledgement.  Nageli 
had  said : 

"  Reflex  action  is  clearly  bound  up  in  higher  animals 
with  sensitiveness.  We  must  also  grant  it  in  the  case  of 
lower  animals,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  deny  it  in  case 
of  plants  and  inorganic  bodies.  ...  In  virtue  of 
its  structure  out  of  different  parts  the  atom  possesses 
various  properties  and  powers,  accordingly  it  also  exer- 
cises various  influences  (attraction  and  repulsion)  upon 
other  atoms.  .  .  .  If,  therefore,  the  molecules  ex- 
perience something  akin  to  sensitiveness  it  must  also  be  a 
pleasure  to  them  if  they  can  follow  their  sympathies  and 
antipathies,  etc.  .  .  .  The  molecules  of  chemical 
elements  are,  therefore,  swayed  by  a  number  of  qualita- 
tively and  quantitatively  different  sensations.  .  .  . 
We  accordingly  find  in  the  lowest  and  simplest  organiza- 
tions of  matter  of  which  we  know,  essentially  the  same 
phenomena  as  in  the  highest.  .  .  .  The  difference  is 
merely  that  of  degree." 

To  that  Virchow  replied :  "  This  is  the  objection 
which  I  make  to  the  statements  of  Herr  Nageli.  .  .  . 
He  not  only  wants  us  to  extend  the  domain  of  mind  to 
animals  and  plants,  but  also  that  we  finally  pass  with 
our  views  of  the  nature  of  mental  phenomena  from  the 
organic  to  the  inorganic  world.  ...  If  mental 
phenomena  are  at  all  costs  to  be  brought  in  connection 
with  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  then  one  necessarily 
arrives  at  transferring  first  the  psychical  phenomena  as 
they  are  found  in  man  and  the  highest  organized  vertebra 
to  the  lower  and  ever  lower  animals,  and  then  to  endow 
even  plants  with  a  soul ;  then  it  is  the  cell  which  feels 
and  thinks,  and  finally  there  is  a  gradual  transition  even 
to  the  chemical  atoms  which  hate  and  love  each  other, 
seek  or  avoid  each  other.  ...  I  do  not  object  to 


252  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

atoms  of  carbon  also  having  a  mind,  .  .  .  but  I 
do  not  see  anything  by  which  it  could  be  known.  It  is  a 
mere  play  upon  words.  By  declaring  attraction  and 
repulsion  to  be  mental,  psychical  phenomena  we  simply 
throw  the  psychical  overboard.  ...  To  us  the 
sum  total  of  psychical  phenomena  is  undoubtedly  only 
associated  with  certain  animals  and  not  with  the  whole 
of  organic  life,  not  even  with  all  animals.  This  I  de- 
clare without  hesitation." 

We  must  acknowledge  that  Virchow  is  in  one  respect 
perfectly  right :  ideas  with  a  distinct  meaning  in  language 
should  remain  distinct.  One  must  not  play  with  words ; 
but  neither  must  one  shut  his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the 
psychical  sensation  of  pleasure  and  pain  presents  a  cer- 
tain analogy  to  the  chemical  attraction  and  repulsion. 
Let  us  only  dot  the  i,  and  then  the  two  will  appear  as 
equally  legitimate  forms  of  the  same  Nature,  as  the 
equally  intelligible  predicate  of  the  same  subject.  Only 
those  who  utterly  refuse  to  connect  the  mental  phenom- 
ena with  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  will  fail  to  per- 
ceive that  the  animal  and  chemical,  the  physical  and  psy- 
chical phenomena  are  common  varieties  of  the  great 
world  process.  And  once  more,  gentlemen :  The  world 
is  dialectical,  as  much  one  or  homogeneous  in  essence  as 
varied  in  the  manner  it  appears;  all  distinction  is  only 
that  of  degree.  The  unity  which  Nageli  defends  is  lost 
to  him  as  soon  as  he  lands  in  "  the  world  of  presenti- 
ment "  and  at  "  divine  omniscience ;"  but  that  unity  is 
already  lost  to  Virchow  when  he  merely  arrives  at  the 
distinction  between  organic  and  inorganic ;  still  more 
intolerable  is  to  him  the  link  between  animal  and  man ; 
and  as  for  the  opposition  between  body  and  soul, —  this 
he  wants  to  keep  outside  the  province  of  debate  alto- 
gether, as  the  bridging  over  of  this  opposition  "  in  the 


PROFESSORS  AND  LIMITS   OF   COGNITION  253 

head  of  the  Socialist "  was  bound  to  cause  an  awful  con- 
fusion and  lead  to  the  overthrow  of  all  professorial 
wisdom. 


THE  INCONCEIVABLE 

A   SPECIAL  CHAPTER  IN   SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY 
'(VOR  WARTS,    1877) 

Both  the  clergy  and  the  professors  are  of  the  opinion 
that  the  human  intellect  is  debarred  from  the  greatest 
possible  knowledge  and  from  the  clearest  possible  un- 
derstanding. They  agree  in  their  endeavor  to  preserve 
to  the  human  intellect  the  character  of  the  limited  under- 
standing of  the  poor  commoner.  Yet  there  is  a  differ- 
ence between  the  two  camps.  The  clergy  keep  account 
of  the  human  desire  of  a  perfect  light,  in  so  far  as  they 
refer  the  poor  commoner's  intellect  for  support  to  the 
great  spirit  above  who,  through  his  revelations,  en- 
lightens and  makes  known  to  man  what  is  good  for  him 
to  know.  The  Philosophers  of  our  Universities,  on  the 
other  hand,  have  their  doubts  about  the  great  spirit  above ; 
they  are  progressive  and  they  substitute  the  earthly 
knowledge  for  the  divine  one,  but  for  all  that  they  show 
the  same  dualistic,  half-hearted  character  in  abstract 
thought  as  their  colleagues,  the  "  Progressists,"  in  poli- 
tics. They  exhibit  the  same  mixture  of  mala  fides  and 
incapacity  in  wisdom  as  these  colleagues  in  matters  of  lib- 
erty. They  cannot  make  an  end  to  all  secret-mongering ; 
and  if  they  find  no  mystery  in  heaven  and  the  sacraments, 
then  there  must  be  something  mystical  in  "  the  essence 
of  things  "  and  in  "  the  ultimate  reasons  "  of  Nature, 
some  insurpassable  barriers  or  "  limits  of  our  cognition  of 
Nature."  Against  such  inveterate  mystics  it  is  as  Social- 

254 


THE   INCONCEIVABLE 

Democrats  our  bounden  duty  to  proclaim  the  limitless 
possibilities  of  the  human  intellect. 

No  doubt  there  is  much  in  Nature  which  is  not  yet 
known, —  who  would  deny  that  ?  Where  is  the  man  who 
never  met  with  phenomena  which  he  called  wonderful, 
inexplicable,  incomprehensible !  Who  would  find  that  un- 
natural? But  what  is  really  wonderful,  incomprehen- 
sible and  inexplicable  is  that  there  are  still  in  the  second 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  certain  scholars  who 
seriously  speak  of  the  limits  of  human  understanding  and 
believe  in  the  real  existence  of  wonderful  things,  of 
miracles  which  are  beyond  the  understanding  not  of 
Peter  or  Paul,  but  beyond  the  horizon  of  mankind. 

We  must,  however,  soon  recover  from  our  astonish- 
ment and  try  to  comprehend  the  incomprehensible.  And 
to  do  this,  it  is  necessary  to  find  the  category  to  which 
it  belongs.  The  incomprehensible  is  explained  as  soon 
as  we  recognise  that  it  belongs  to  the  category  of 
thoughtlessness.  It  may  appear  presumptuous  on  my 
part  to  speak  so  disrespectfully  of  a  thing  which  is 
treated  by  high  authorities  with  such  a  solemn  serious- 
ness. In  science,  however,  all  belief  in  authorities  must 
cease.  The  capacities  of  the  human  intellect  are  so  un- 
limited that  they,  in  the  course  of  time,  make  new  dis- 
coveries, open  new  vistas  which  regularly  make  the  old 
authorities  appear  as  mere  duffers.  Though  I  am  de- 
fending the  view  of  the  unlimited  capacities  of  the  human 
intellect,  I  am  none  the  less  thoroughly  conscious  of  the 
limitation  of  all  men  and  all  times,  and  so  I  am,  despite 
my  exuberant  spirits,  a  modest  fellow. 

The  intellect  is,  as  is  well  known  an  organ  with  which 
we  perceive.  From  the  other  organs  of  perception  it  is 
differentiated  by  its  being  the  most  essential  factor. 
Without  eyes  we  may  still  hear,  taste  and  smell  but  with- 


256  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

out  consciousness,  without  the  spirit  in  our  head  the 
whole  world  is  at  an  end.  On  the  other  hand  a  con- 
sciousness without  the  aid  of  the  senses  would  know 
nothing.  Thus  it  may  be  seen  that  they  all  belong  to- 
gether. The  intellect  may  be  a  captain  but  only  so  in 
connection  with  the  private  soldiers,  our  five  senses  and 
the  things  of  the  world. 

We  may  even  regard  the  senses  of  man  deficient,  be- 
cause there  are  animals  whose  senses  are  more  developed 
than  his,  but  with  regard  to  intellect  man  is  no  doubt 
superior  to  all  other  "  creatures."  "  In  this  world "  no- 
body has  ever  met  with  a  superior  mind  to  that  of  man. 
How  it  stands  "  in  the  other  world  "  with  angels,  gob- 
lins and  nymphs,  history  can  tell  us  nothing  about  that. 
And  even  if  we  admit  for  a  moment  that  supernatural 
spirits  crowd  the  stars  and  moons,  they  must,  insofar  as 
they  bake  bread,  use  flour,  and  not  metal  or  wood  for  this 
purpose.  If  the  supernatural  spirits  are  endowed  with 
reason,  then  that  reason  cannot  be  of  any  other  general 
nature  than  ours.  If  the  metaphysical  intellect  is  differ- 
ent, and  perhaps  of  the  nature  of  wood  or  tallow,  then 
we  must  be  permitted  to  deny  it  the  name  of  intellect. 
We  may  only  use  the  language  as  it  is  customary.  It 
has  divided  things  into  classes  and  varieties  and  we  must 
accept  them  as  such  if  we  want  to  be  comprehensible 
and  reasonable.  If  there  are  things  in  heaven  or  in  some 
transcendental  region,  which  are  of  a  nature  totally  dif- 
ferent from  the  things  on  earth,  then  they  must  be  given 
other  names ;  and  not  being  adepts  of  the  angel-language 
we  cannot  reasonably  say  anything  with  regard  to 
"  something  higher,"  the  metaphysical  or  ghostly. 

Strange  and  yet  true !  Such  reasoning  is  exasperating 
to  our  philosophers.  Kant  has  told  them  something  and 
they  are  going  on  rehearsing  it:  only  the  natural  phe- 


THE   INCONCEIVABLE  2$? 

nomena  can  be  conceived ;  but  what  is  behind  them,  the 
"  thing  in  itself  "  or  the  mystery  —  that,  thou  poor  hu- 
man intellect,  is  inconceivable  by  thee.  And  yet  that 
whole  mystery,  the  whole  secret,  is  nothing  but  an  ex- 
aggerated idea  which  they  got  about  the  intellect.  Al- 
though they  pretend  limitation  and  continually  speak  of 
the  incapacity  to  go  beyond  the  limits  of  cognition,  they 
cannot  get  rid  of  the  exaggerated  notion  of  an  incon- 
ceivable conceivability,  or  of  the  idea  of  a  monster-mind 
who  could  understand  where  there  is  nothing  to  be  un- 
derstood. 

Aha !  —  my  keen  opponent  will  retort  —  you  see !  you 
speak  somehow  of  things  which  no  man  can  understand. 
Then  there  are  inconceivable  things.  Well,  well ! 

Yes,  my  dear  mystic !  I  should  like  to  see  the  wonder- 
ful things  discussed,  provided  that  they  are  stripped  of 
their  wonderful  metaphysical  character.  There  is  much 
that  is  incomprehensible,  there  are  limits  to  our  under- 
standing, but  only  in  the  sober  sense  of  the  word,  just 
as  there  are  things  invisible  and  inaudible,  just  as  there 
are  limits  to  the  capacity  of  our  senses  of  seeing  and  hear- 
ing. Everything  has  its  natural  limit,  and  so  has  also 
the  intellect.  If  musical  tunes,  sweet  scents,  the  gravity 
of  bodies  are  not  visible  to  the  eye,  it  is  because  the 
eye  has  reasonable  limits,  and  not  because  the  eye  has 
unnatural  limits  in  a  metaphysical  sense,  which  denotes 
human  inferiority  in  comparison  with  some  over-human 
superiority.  Inferior  a  thing  may  be  in  comparison  with 
another  of  the  same  class,  but  in  general  all  things  are 
perfect  —  they  can't  be  otherwise.  A  more  perfect  wood 
than  that  which  is  generally  growing  on  earth  could  not 
be  grown  in  metaphysics.  When  the  wood  changes  com- 
pletely the  character  of  its  kind  then  we  can't  call  it 
wood  any  more.  Or  should  we  deal  with  iron  woods? 


258  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

Just  as  wood  is  limited  by  its  wooden  nature,  so  is  the 
eye  limited  to  visible  things.  And  just  as  the  eye,  the 
general  eye,  sees  all  that  is  visible,  so  does  the  intellect, 
especially  the  human  intellect,  perceive  everything  which 
is  reasonable.  Unreasonable  things,  which  can't  be  rea- 
soned out  and  understood,  do  not  belong  to  its  domain, 
and  that  is  no  more  a  defect,  a  barrier  of  the  intellect, 
than  the  incapacity  of  the  eye  to  see  without  light,  or  to 
feel  a  toothache.  Monster-eyes  may  possess  such  an 
unnatural  capacity  of  seeing. 

In  order  to  make  an  end  to  the  gruesome  talk  of  the 
Inconceivable  and  of  the  "  limits  of  knowledge  of  Na- 
ture "  in  the  metaphysical  sense  it  is  necessary  to  be  clear 
about  this  question :  What  does  it  mean  to  know,  to 
explain,  to  perceive?  I  repeat  the  cause  of  all  supersti- 
tion, of  all  religious  and  philosophic  metaphysics,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  exaggerated  idea  of  the  function  of  the 
intellect,  in  the  unreasonable  demands  made  upon  the 
faculty  of  cognition  —  that  is,  in  epistemological  ig- 
norance. Our  contemporaries  have  an  inkling  of  this 
fact.  The  learned  magazines  teem  with  discussions  on 
that  subject-matter,  and  nearly  approach  the  truth,  but 
the  full  light  is  still  missing,  and  can  only  be  given  by 
Social-Democrats.  It  is  the  possession  of  that  light 
which  enables  our  party  to  handle  the  intellect  with 
systematic  precision  and  to  clear  away  the  philosophic 
and  theological  mysteries  guarded  until  now  by  the  priv- 
ileged classes. 

Just  as  the  peasant  misunderstands  the  principle  of 
mechanics,  so  does  the  professor  of  Philosophy  mis- 
understand the  principle  of  the  intellectual  function.  It 
is  difficult  to  make  untrained  brains  understand  that  all 
levers  and  wheels  do  not  increase  the  volume  of  a  power, 
but  merely  distribute  the  pressure  and  thus  enable  us  to 


THE    INCONCEIVABLE 

handle  it  in  an  easier  manner.  But  still  more  difficult 
is  it  to  convince  the  professors  of  Philosophy  that  all 
cognition,  comprehension  and  explanation  is  simply  a 
formal  act.  The  phenomena  of  the  world  and  of  life 
must  be  regarded  as  comprehended  and  explained  when 
they  are  divided  into  classes,  families,  varieties,  species, 
etc.,  and  brought  into  a  formal  scientific  schedule  show- 
ing how  they  belong  to  one  another  and  how  they  follow 
each  other. 

When  a  monster  meets  me  in  the  forest,  which,  on 
account  of  my  defective  knowledge  of  natural  history, 
makes  me  wonder  as  to  what  it  is,  and  when  at  the  same 
time  a  naturalist  comes  along  and  informs  me  that  it  is 
not  a  cannibal,  but  a  rhinoceros  which  belongs  to  the 
family  of  pachyderms  whose  home  is  in  Africa,  Asia, 
etc.,  then  under  such  a  systematic  registration  my  aston- 
ished ignorance  turns  into  clear  knowledge.  And  when 
I  ask  the  physicist  why  the  falling  body  increases  in 
velocity  from  second  to  second,  he  will  explain  it  to  me 
by  the  law  of  gravitation,  that  is,  he  brings  the  different 
phenomena  into  one  class  and  subordinates  them  under 
one  scientific  formula.  All  our  reasoning,  explaining 
and  knowing  cannot  ask  for  more  and  ought  not  ask 
for  more  of  our  intellectual  force.  Those  who  demand 
more  of  the  intellect  are  like  the  ignorant  mechanic  who 
seeks  to  invent  the  Perpetuum  Mobile. 

"  Physics,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  explains  the  phe- 
nomena by  something  still  more  unknown,  by  natural 
laws,  natural  forces,  etc.  Such  explanations  are,  like 
the  devil  with  the  cloven  foot,  afflicted  with  the  defect 
that  they  themselves  need  to  be  explained."  The  same 
philosopher  says  in  another  place :  "  However  great  the 
progress  may  be  which  physics  makes,  it  does  not  bring 
us  a  single  step  nearer  to  metaphysics.  .  .  .  Under 


2(X)  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

metaphysics  I  (Schopenhauer)  understand  any  alleged 
knowledge  which  goes  beyond  the  possibility  of  expe- 
rience, in  order  to  furnish  us  with  information  as  to  what 
is  behind  Nature.  .  .  .  Even  if  one  has  traversed  all 
stars  and  planets,  no  step  was  made  into  the  region  of 
metaphysics."  With  those  words  the  famous  man  has 
stated  two  things :  First,  that  metaphysics  lies  in  Cloud- 
lands;  secondly,  that  he,  with  his  inordinate  desire  for 
crazy  explanations,  still  sticks  to  the  metaphysical  craving. 
He  calls  man  "  animal  metaphysicum,"  whereby  he  wants 
to  say  that  it  is  metaphysics  which  distinguishes  man 
from  the  animal.  As  against  that  I  am  of  deliberate 
opinion  that  the  descent  of  man  begins  just  where  the 
metaphysical  or  philosophical  animal  disappears. 

No  doubt,  the  thing  has,  as  everything  else,  different 
sides.  Metaphysics  or  the  exaggerated  ideas  had  to  pro- 
ceed in  order  to  lead  to  the  sober  view  that  our  intellect 
is  an  ordinary,  formal  and  mechanical  force.  The  light 
of  that  conviction  is  even  dawning  everywhere,  but  still 
only  dawning.  How  its  ascent  is  hampered  by  the  old 
exaggerated  ideas  may  be  seen  daily  in  dozens  of  the 
learned  reviews.  For  instance,  in  No.  34  of  the  Wage, 
1876,  Dr.  Kalischer  remarks :  "  Newton  as  well  as  Dar- 
win starts  from  given  material,  to  which  the  first  applies 
his  Law  as  a  measure.  But  what  he  shows  by  such  an 
application  is  the  mathematical,  the  formal,  while  the 
essential  of  the  physical  process  remains  completely  un- 
explained. .  .  .  According  to  that  we  reach  the 
highest  summit  of  knowledge  when  we  get  the  mathe- 
matical formula ;  for  the  so-called  '  explanation  '  goes 
always  so  far  as  we  can  subordinate  the  natural  phe- 
nomena under  the  principle  of  mechanism." 

Thus  Dr.  Kalischer  knows  the  highest  summit  of 
knowledge,  he  is,  so  to  speak,  in  agreement  with  Hobbes : 


THE    INCONCEIVABLE  26l 

"  Where  there  is  nothing  to  add  and  nothing  to  subtract 
all  thinking  is  at  an  end,"  yet  he  desires  to  climb  to  the 
highest-highest  top  in  order  to  reach  an  explanation 
which  overtops  the  "  so-called  explanation."  Or  in  other 
words:  Though  our  thinking  force  is  in  the  last  in- 
stance explained  when  we  recognize  it  as  a  formal  in- 
strument, yet  there  are  people  who  speculate  upon  a 
monster-reason  which  should  explain  the  world  meta- 
physically. 

I  can  well  imagine  how  the  professors  of  Philosophy 
dislike  our  conception,  but  I  should  like  to  ask  them  most 
earnestly  to  kindly  tell  us  what  gives  them  the  right  to 
conclude  from  the  natural  limits  of  reason  that  there 
is  an  unnatural  unlimited  reason ;  further  to  tell  us  why 
they  don't  conclude  from  the  limited  nature  of  a  piece  of 
tin-plate  that  there  is  a  limitless,  heavenly,  metaphysical 
tin-plate.  Such  a  conclusion  can  only  be  drawn  by  one 
who  does  not  consider  reason  or  tin-plate  to  be  a  natural 
thing  which,  like  all  other  natural  things,  have  their 
fixed  limits  defined  by  linguistic  usage;  only  professors 
and  scholars  who  carry  in  their  bosom  the  last  Mohican 
of  a  "  higher "  transcendental  world,  an  exaggerated 
idea  of  a  superhuman  intellect,  can  draw  such  conclusions. 

After  the  clear  statements  of  the  philologists  Max  Mul- 
ler,  of  Oxford,  or  of  William  Dwight  Whitney,  that 
where  the  limit  of  things  begins  their  names  cease,  all 
limitless  fancyful  speculations  must  cease.  When  our 
intellect  reaches  the  point  where  there  is  nothing  to  be 
perceived,  or  where  the  Inconceivable  begins,  even  then 
we  have  as  little  right  to  speak  of  a  totally  different 
world  as  when  we  reach  the  point  with  our  voice  where 
there  is  nothing  more  to  sing.  Where  the  singing 
ceases,  howling  may  commence,  and  where  theory  is  at  an 
end,  practice  should  begin. 


EXCURSIONS  OF  A  SOCIALIST  INTO  THE  DO- 
MAIN OF  EPISTEMOLOGY. 

(SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC  LIBRARY,  HOTTINGEN-ZURICH 
1887.) 

PREFACE 

The  subject  of  the  following  articles  seems  to  have  so 
little  in  common  with  Social-Democracy  that  their  publi- 
cation as  part  of  the  Social-Democratic  Library  necessi- 
tates a  few  words  of  explanation. 

The  theory  of  cognition  with  which  these  Excursions 
deal  has  for  its  subject-matter  the  question,  how  is  the 
instrument  in  our  head  constituted  which  everybody  has 
to  use  in  order  to  gain  knowledge  of  the  natural  and 
human  conditions  which  surround  him,  to  distinguish, 
judge  and  understand  them. 

An  instrument  which  everybody  possesses  and  uses 
may  be  called  a  democratic  instrument.  The  intellect  is 
common  to  all  men  and,  therefore,  is  a  concern  of  the 
community  or  society,  a  Social-Democratic  instrument,  a 
Social-Democratic  concern.  If  Bismarck  uses  his  instru- 
ment differently  from  Social-Democrats  we  are  con- 
vinced that  he  makes  a  wrong  use  of  his  intellect. 

Absolute  unanimity  we  can  never  attain,  yet  progress 
in  this  direction  is  unmistakable.  So  also  will  the  theory 
of  cognition  never  exhaust  its  subject  and  render  us 
infallible  in  the  use  of  our  mental  powers ;  still  we  must 
not  on  that  account  renounce  improvement.  Social-De- 
mocracy, too,  is  strenuously  working  with  the  view  of 

263 


264  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

making  the  minds  more  unanimous ;  consequently  a  well- 
founded  theory  of  cognition  can  only  be  of  value  to  it. 

As  I  say,  the  theory  of  cognition  deals  with  the  ques- 
tion of  how  our  instrument  of  thinking  is  constituted.  By 
learning  the  nature  of  it  we  learn  at  the  same  time  the 
use  of  it.  Although  the  nature  and  the  use  of  a  thing 
may  be  regarded  as  two  separate  things,  it  is  none  the 
less  permissible  to  coalesce  them  into  one.  In  my  opinion 
only  that  person  is  able  to  understand  the  nature  of  a 
violin  who  knows  thoroughly  how  to  play  it  —  who 
knows  what  there  is  in  it  and  what  is  to  be  done  to  bring 
it  out  of  it. 

That  men,  with  their  instrument  of  thinking,  have 
judged  correctly,  thought  correctly  and  discriminated 
exactly  without  knowing  anything  of  epistemology  is,  of 
course,  unquestionable.  The  farmer  knows  how  to  grow 
potatoes  without  having  attended  an  agricultural  college. 
Yet  one  cannot  but  admit  that  science  makes  even  the 
farmer  more  intelligent  in  his  work.  It  teaches  him  how 
to  predetermine  the  results  of  his  work.  If  he  still  re- 
mains, in  spite  of  his  predetermination,  at  the  mercy  of 
wind  and  weather,  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  science 
gives  him  the  means  to  control  Nature  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent. Absolutely  free  he  will  never  be;  science  and  re- 
flection cannot  help  him  to  sovereign  power,  still  they 
help  him.  If  we  cease  to  be  slaves  of  Nature  we  shall 
nevertheless  ever  remain  her  servants.  Knowledge  can 
only  give  the  possible  freedom  which  is  at  the  same  time 
the  only  rational  one. 

And  so  the  instrument  which  is  analysed  in  the  follow- 
ing pages  is  used  by  everyone  at  every  opportunity. 
Nothing  is  so  general  and  universal  in  the  world  of  man 
as  perception,  discrimination,  judgment,  knowledge,  etc. 
The  theory  of  cognition  must,  therefore,  be  regarded  as 


EXCURSIONS    INTO    THE   DOMAIN   OF    EPISTEMOLOGY    265 

an  elementary  study,  as  the  Alphabet,  but  in  a  higher 
sense.  A  trained  intellect  goes  farther  than  the  art  of 
reading  and  writing.  The  celebrated  Spinoza  already 
left  us  an  opuscule  on  the  "  Improvement  of  Under- 
standing," ancTTtrisr  to  be  regretted  that  his  work  has 
been  left  incomplete.  And  it  is  nothing  less  than  the 
improvement  of  this  instrument  that  we  aim  at  in  the 
present  "  Excursions  into  the  domain  of  the  theory  of 
cognition." 

Whoever  desires  to  be  an  intelligent  Social-Democrat 
must  improve  his  method  of  thinking.  It  was  mainly  the 
study  of  the  improved  method  of  thinking  which  helped 
the  well-known  founders  of  Social-Democracy,  Marx  and 
Engels,  in  raising  Social-Democracy  to  a  scientific  stand- 
point on  which  it  finds  itself  now.  The  improvement 
of  the  method  of  thinking  is  like  every  other  improve- 
ment, a  limitless  problem,  the  solution  of  which  must 
always  remain  unachieved.  This,  however,  must  in  no 
wise  keep  us  from  striving  after  it.  The  only  and  nat- 
ural way  consists  in  increasing  our  general  knowledge 
by  mastering  the  special  branches  of  science.  Although 
the  theory  of  cognition,  by  setting  out  to  illuminate  the 
lamp  from  which  all  light  emanates,  touches  the  desired 
enlightment  of  the  human  mind  at  its  very  source,  we 
are  nevertheless  modest  enough  to  acknowledge  that 
such  a  theory,  be  it  ever  so  perfect,  is  not  sufficient. 
Though  all  special  branches  of  science  are  conducive  to 
that  end,  yet  none  of  them  is  able  to  form  the  generalisa- 
tion which  could  entirely  illuminate  the  mind.  This  can 
only  be  achieved  gradually,  wherefore  we  shall  be  con- 
tent if  these  "  Excursions  "  will  have  contributed  some- 
thing to  the  general  aim  of  science. 

CHICAGO,  December  15,  1886. 

J.  DIETZGEN. 


I. 

"  THE  INNERMOST  OF  NATURE  NO  CREATED  MIND  CAN 
ENTER." 

These  words  of  von  Haller  are  singularly  apt  to  dem- 
onstrate on  them,  how  even  the  "  eternal  truths  "  have 
succumbed  to  the  corroding  influence  of  time.  This  so 
often  quoted  line  of  the  poet  has  even  now  numerous 
admirers  who  repeat  it.  The  more  reason  have  we  to 
show  those  who  believe  in  the  old  wisdom,  what  progress 
is  being  made  by  the  ever-revolutionary  criticism. 

The  "  created  mind  "  is  the  special  subject-matter  of 
a  special  science  calling  itself  "  Philosophy."  The  mean- 
ing of  this  term  has  undergone  many  changes.  In  the 
times  of  the  ancient  Greeks  a  philosopher  was  a  general 
lover  of  wisdom,  whilst  nowadays  the  growth  of  general 
culture  has  proceeded  so  far  as  to  make  people  under- 
stand that  with  the  general  love  no  great  results  can  be 
achieved.  Whoever  seeks  wisdom  must  turn  to  science, 
which  grows  its  fruit  not  in  the  hazy  generality,  but  in 
concrete  special  fields.  Philosophy,  too,  has  become  a 
special  branch  and  has  a  special  subject  of  study  which 
is  that  of  the  "  created  mind." 

To  speak  precisely:  since  Kant's  time  Philosophy  has 
begun  to  recognise  that  its  former  efforts  had  been  more 
or  less  of  a  youthful  dream,  and  that  it  must,  like  all 
other  scientific  branches,  set  before  itself  a  definite  aim 
if  it  is  at  all  to  arrive  at  some  sort  of  result.  Philosophy 
has  since  then  become  gradually  modernised  and  has  now 
finally  settled  down  to  a  critique  of  cognition. 

266 


EXCURSIONS   INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    267 

The  created  mind  or  the  mental  organ  which  has  been 
implanted  by  Nature  in  the  head  of  man,  has  always 
puzzled  him  as  a  mystery.  The  solution  of  this  mystery 
has  been  effected  by  the  observation  that  all  things,  all 
natural  phenomena  are  mysterious  as  long  as  they  are 
not  understood,  not  investigated.  The  more  intimately 
man  gets  acquainted  with  them,  the  more  they  lose  their 
mysterious  character.  The  mind  is  no  exception  to  this 
rule.  Since  Philosophy  has  consciously,  clearly  and  defi- 
nitely occupied  itself  with  it,  the  mysterious  unknown 
has  become  more  known  and  has  acquired  quite  a  differ- 
ent complexion. 

Just  as  the  fetishists  deify  the  commonest  things  — 
stones  and  pieces  of  wood  —  so  has  the  "  created  mind," 
too,  been  deified  and  wrapt  in  mystery  —  first  by  religion 
and  afterwards  by  Philosophy.  What  religion  used  to 
call  belief  and  supernatural  world,  was  called  by  Philoso- 
phy metaphysics.  Still  we  must  acknowledge  that  the 
latter  had  for  its  laudable  object  to  make  of  its  study  a 
science, —  an  aim  which,  indeed,  it  has  finally  achieved  in 
a  physical  manner.  Behind  its  own  back  there  has  arisen 
out  of  the  metaphysical  world-wisdom  the  special  science 
of  a  modest  theory  of  cognition. 

Nevertheless  we  do  not  wish  to  give  the  philosophers 
too  much  credit  for  that.  The  mind  saw  scientific  light 
not  merely  through  philosophical  heads ;  investigators  of 
natural  science,  too,  have  at  least  indirectly,  contributed 
something  towards  its  elucidation.  By  enlightening  the 
human  mind  in  respect  to  other  subjects  science  pre- 
pared the  ground  for,  and  provided  the  possibility  of,  an 
epistemological  enlightenment.  Before  Philosophy  could 
enter  the  innermost  of  the  mind-function,  it  had  to  be 
shown  by  the  practical  achievements  of  natural  science 
how  the  mental  instrument  of  man  possesses  the  hitherto 


268  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

doubted  faculty  of  illuminating  the  innermost  of  Nature. 
The  physicists  do  not  close  their  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
there  are  many  unknown  worlds.  Still  some  of  them 
have  yet  to  learn  that  the  Unknown,  too,  is  not  so  totally 
unknown  and  mysterious.  Even  the  most  unknown 
world  and  the  most  mysterious  things  are  together  with 
the  known  places  and  objects  of  one  and  the  same  cate- 
gory, namely,  of  the  universal  union  of  Nature.  Owing 
to  the  conception  of  the  Universe  virtually  existing,  as 
a  kind  of  an  innate  idea,  in  the  human  mind,  the  latter 
knows  a  priori  that  all  things,  the  heavenly  bodies  in- 
cluded, exist  in  the  Universe  and  are  of  universal,  com- 
mon nature.  The  "  created  mind  "  proves  no  exception 
to  this  scientific  law. 

The  old  religious  world  of  ideas  renders  difficult  the 
recognition  of  the  truth  that  Nature  is  not  only  a  nomi- 
nal but  an  actual  monas  which  has  neither  above  it,  nor 
in  it,  nor  alongside  of  it  anything  else, —  not  an  uncreated 
mind,  either.  The  belief  in  an  uncreated,  monstrous,  re- 
ligious mind  impedes  the  conception  that  the  human  mind 
itself  has  been  created  and  produced  by  Nature  —  con- 
sequently is  her  own  child  towards  which  she  knows  no 
reserve.  And  yet  Nature  is  reserved, —  she  never  dis- 
closes her  secrets  all  at  a  time  or  completely.  She  can- 
not give  herself  away  entirely  because  she  is  inexhausti- 
ble in  her  treasures.  Still  the  created  mind,  the  child  of 
Nature,  is  a  lamp  which  illuminates  not  only  the  outer- 
most, but  also  the  innermost  of  Nature.  In  view  of  the 
physically  endless  and  inexhaustible  and  all-embracing 
Nature  such  expressions  as  Innermost  and  Outermost 
must  be  regarded  as  antiquated  conceptions.  The  same 
holds  true  of  the  term  "  created  mind "  insofar  as  this 
expression  suggests  an  uncreated  great,  monstrous,  meta- 
physical spirit  which  has  its  seat  beyond  the  clouds. 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY   269 

The  "  great  spirit  "  of  religion  is  the  cause  of  the  dis- 
paragement of  the  human  mind  of  which  the  poet  is 
guilty  when  he  denies  to  it  the  capacity  of  penetrating 
into  the  "  Innermost  of  Nature."  And  at  the  same  time 
the  uncreated  monstrous  spirit  is  but  a  fantastical  reflex 
of  the  naturally  produced  human  mind. 

The  theory  of  cognition  in  its  most  developed  stage  is 
able  to  prove  this  proposition  up  to  the  hilt.  It  has 
shown  to  us  that  the  created  mind  derives  all  its  ideas, 
conceptions  and  thoughts  from  the  monistic  world  which 
science  calls  the  "  physical  world."  The  created  mind 
is  the  definite  child  of  the  world.  Good  mother  Nature 
gave  to  it  something  of  her  inexhaustibility.  Mind  is  as 
limitless  and  inexhaustible  in  gaining  knowledge  as  Na- 
ture is  in  her  readiness  to  open  her  breast.  The  child 
is  only  limited  by  the  limitless  wealth  of  its  mother's  love, 
—  it  cannot  exhaust  the  inexhaustible.  The  created  mind 
penetrates  with  its  science  into  the  innermost  of  Nature, 
but  it  cannot  penetrate  beyond  that, —  not  because  it  is  a 
narrowly  limited  mind,  but  because  its  mother  is  Infinite- 
Nature,  a  natural  infinity  having  nothing  besides  it. 

The  wonderful  mother  gave  its  child  consciousness  as 
an  inheritance.  The  created  mind  comes  into  the  world 
with  the  faculty  of  becoming  conscious  that  it  is  the  child 
of  its  good  mother  Nature  which  created  for  it  the  ability 
to  form  excellent  images  of  all  other  children  of  its 
mother,  of  all  its  brothers  and  sisters.  Thus  the  "  created 
mind "  possesses  images,  ideas,  notions  of  air,  water, 
earth,  fire,  etc.,  and  at  the  same  time  the  consciousness 
that  these  pictures  which  it  had  formed,  are  each  true 
and  adequate  images.  No  doubt,  the  mind  finds  by  ex- 
perience that  the  children  of  Nature  are  changeable, 
that,  for  instance,  water  consists  of  various  kinds  of 
Waters  of  which  no  drop  is  absolutely  like  the  other ;  but 


2/O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

that  much  it  has  inherited  from  its  mother :  to  know  by 
its  own  nature  and  a  priori  that  water  cannot  alter  its 
general  nature  without  ceasing  to  be  water  and  without 
losing  all  sense;  it  therefore  knows,  so  to  speak,  pro- 
phetically that  however  much  things  may  change,  their 
general  nature,  their  general  essence  cannot  change.  The 
created  mind  can  never  know  all  the  possibilities  and  im- 
possibilities of  its  uncreated  mother;  but  that  water  is 
under  all  circumstances  wet,  or  that  mind,  be  it  even 
met  with  beyond  the  clouds,  cannot  change  its  general 
nature, —  this  the  created  mind  knows  apodictically  and 
of  its  own  innate  nature.  The  created  mind,  child  of 
nature  that  it  is,  possesses  the  innate  faculty  of  knowing 
that  reason  must  be  rational,  that  nature  must  be  natural, 
that  water  must  be  liquid  and  that  the  uncreated  spirit 
must  be  a  monstrous  absurdity. 

The  above  may  seem  to  be  a  mere  assertion  without 
proof.  Yet,  since  every  reader  carries  about  with  him 
the  proof  of  these  facts  in  his  head,  I  may  be  spared  the 
trouble  to  bring  proofs  from  other  quarters.  One  need 
only  ask  his  own  head  whether  it  does  not  know  prophet- 
ically that  if  there  be  a  reason  on  the  moon  that  reason 
may  be  smaller  or  greater  than  that  of  Peter  or  Paul, 
but  must,  in  spite  of  all  possible  variations,  remain  as  re- 
gards its  magnitude  and  power  within  certain  reasonable 
limits. 

The  knowledge  of  the  "  created  mind,"  accumulated  in 
the  course  of  centuries  by  Philosophy  and  Science,  cul- 
minates in  the  doctrine  that  this  mind  is  a  force,  a  force 
of  nature,  like  that  of  gravitation,  like  heat,  light,  elec- 
tricity, etc.,  and  that  alongside  of  its  general  nature,  it 
possesses,  like  all  other  forces,  a  special  nature  of  its  own 
which  distinguishes  it  from  all  other  forces  and  makes  it 
knowable.  If  we  closely  examine  this  special  nature  of 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE  DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    27! 

the  "  created  mind,"  we  find  that  it  possesses  an  innate, 
and,  if  you  like,  "  wonderful "  faculty  of  knowing  with 
perfect  sureness  and  without  further  inquiries  that  two 
mountains  must  have  a  valley  between  them,  that  a  part 
is  smaller  than  the  whole,  that  circles  are  not  square  and 
that  bears  are  not  elephants.  This  wonderful  faculty  of 
the  mind  deserves  every  notice,  since  from  it  follows  the 
further  positive  knowledge  that  the  idea  of  another  mind, 
besides  the  familiar  human  mind, —  the  idea  of  a  mind 
which  is  above  all  known  minds,  is  an  extravagant  idea, 
an  ideological  extravagance. 

The  created  mind  has  inherited  from  its  mother  Nature 
the  faculty,  developed  by  experience,  to  classify  the  other 
creatures  of  nature,  to  distinguish  and  to  name  them. 
Thus  it  distinguishes  the  beech  from  the  oak,  the  bears 
from  the  elephants ;  it  classifies  the  world  and  is  convinced 
that  such  classification  is  justified,  and  true,  clear,  and 
distinct.  That  this  classification  is  subject  to  develop- 
ment and,  consequently,  to  certain  modifications,  to  lim- 
ited changes,  does  not  alter,  and  is  no  contradiction  of, 
the  fact  that  on  the  whole  the  classification  made  by  the 
human  mind  is  a  well-defined,  stable  and  durable  one. 
From  this  it  follows  that  what  is  called  in  New  York 
bread  may  be  called  in  Paris  du  pain,  that  is,  bread  may 
change  its  name,  but  it  always  and  everywhere  remains 
bread.  It  may  also  be  of  various  kinds,  forms  and  tints 
and  be  made  of  various  kinds  of  flour,  but  these  forms 
cannot  alter  its  essence.  The  oak  may  be  of  different 
varieties,  but  it  cannot  vary  beyond  the  limits  of  its  spe- 
cies. The  same  with  bears :  there  are  large  and  small, 
brown  and  black,  but  there  can  be  none  which  drop  out 
of  their  species  entirely. 

Such  knowledge  is  supplied  to  us  through  the  objective 
research  of  the  "  creative  mind." 


272  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

We  refer  to  these  facts  in  order  to  make  it  clear  that 
we  are  as  sure  in  this  respect  with  regard  to  the  mind 
as  we  are  with  regard  to  bread,  oak  or  bear.  There  may 
be  on  other  planets  many  minds  which  we  do  not  know, 
but  on  the  whole,  according  to  their  species  they  cannot  be 
constituted  differently  from  those  "  created  minds  "  which 
we  know,  without  dropping  out  not  only  from  the  name, 
but  also  from  the  conception.  The  supernatural  mind 
is  a  fantastic  conception. 

Just  as  fantastical  is  also  the  conception  of  Nature  by 
those  who  speak  of  a  Nature  which  shuts  her  innermost 
against  the  "  creative  mind."  Nature  is  the  Unlimited. 
Those  who  grasp  this  grasp  also  that  with  reference  to 
her  there  can  be  no  question  of  beginning  and  end,  of 
the  above  and  below,  of  the  innermost  and  outermost. 
All  these  terms  do  not  refer  to  Nature  in  general,  which 
is  the  absolute,  but  merely  to  her  parts,  to  her  products, 
the  single  things. 

With  our  hands  we  only  grasp  the  tangible,  with  our 
eyes  only  the  visible, 'etc.,  but  with  our  conception  we 
grasp  the  whole  Nature,  the  Universe.  With  all  that 
our  faculty  of  conception  need  not  be  conceited  and  look 
down  on  the  senses  as  on  something  quite  inferior  and 
limited.  That  faculty,  innate  in  the  human  head,  would 
as  little  be  able  to  form  a  conception  without  the  aid  of 
the  senses  as  would  the  eye  to  see,  the  ears  to  hear,  the 
hands  to  touch  without  the  assistance  of  the  mind.  Just 
as  the  whole  depends  on  the  particulars,  so  all  particu- 
lars depend  on  the  Nature  as  a  whole. 

If  we  wish  to  form  a  concrete  picture  of  Nature  and 
its  created  mind  we  must,  above  all,  infuse  the  latter 
with  the  consciousness  that  it  must  not  raise  itself  above 
the  mother  as  it  did  when  it  dreamt  of  a  super-  and  ex- 
tra-natural mind.  A  proper  conception  of  the  human 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY   273 

mind,  a  conception  which  thinks  of  this  piece  of  Nature 
neither  extravagantly,  nor  disparagingly,  but  exactly, — 
such  a  conception  can  only  be  gained  if  we  become  pos- 
sessed of  the  clear  and  distinct  consciousness  of  the  uni- 
versality of  Nature.  Then  we  perceive  that  the  mys- 
terious character  which  was  ascribed  to  her,  is  a  fancy. 
We  see  then  and  learn  from  experience  how  frankly  uni- 
versal Nature  goes  about  her  work.  Our  mind  is  her 
own  product.  ,  She  endowed  it  with  the  faculty  and 
mission  to  gain  knowledge  of  her  and  of  all  her  phe- 
nomena. I  say  "  of  all  "  and  use  the  term  in  a  reasona- 
ble and  moderate  sense  of  the  word,  without  failing  to 
consider  that  Nature  is  inexhaustible  in  the  production 
of  her  phenomena,  and  that  the  "  created  mind,"  so  far 
as  it  is  but  a  piece  of  Nature,  can,  in  spite  of  its  uni- 
versality in  conceiving,  only  be  a  limited  creature  of  Na- 
ture. 

Do  we  not  possess  a  sense  of  touch  which  feels  every- 
thing tangible?  Maybe,  that  there  is  an  animal  whose 
feelers  are  still  more  delicate  than  the  nerves  of  the  human 
skin.  Have  we  on  that  account  cause  to  complain  of 
our  limited  sense  of  touch  or  of  the  inadequacy  of  Na- 
ture? Perhaps,  we  should  have,  if  she  had  not  endowed 
us  with  a  mind  which  is  inventive  enough  to  acquire  in- 
struments by  whose  means  we  can  discover  things  inac- 
cessible to  the  most  delicate  feelers. 

In  short,  whoever  considers  the  results  of  natural  sci- 
ence cannot  accuse  Nature  of  a  mysterious  reservedness, 
and  whoever  at  the  same  time  takes  stock  of  the  results 
of  Philosophy  cannot  fail  to  notice  that  the  human  mind 
is  called  upon  to  solve  all  possible  problems.  But  the 
Impossible  has  neither  sense  nor  reason  and  must  not 
therefore  form  the  object  of  our  observation  and  atten- 
tion. 


274  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

What  did  we  say?  The  Impossible  had  neither  sense 
nor  reason?  Are  we  to  postulate  reason  in  something 
else  besides  the  human  head?  Are  we  not,  we  human 
beings,  the  highest  ones  to  possess  a  mind,  reason,  under- 
standing, a  faculty  of  cognition?  The  latter  being  the 
special  subject  of  this  chapter,  we  may  as  well  deal  with 
the  question  now. 

Just  as  the  faculty  of  seeing  is  connected  organically 
with  light  and  color,  or  the  subjective  sense  of  touch  with 
tangible  objects,  so  also  is  the  created  mind  connected 
with  the  riddle  of  Nature.  Without  comprehensible 
things  in  the  external  world  there  can  really  be  no  under- 
standing inside  the  head.  To  have  missed  this  inter- 
relation of  things  was  the  fault  of  those  backward  epis- 
temologists  who  have  such  hazy  notions  of  mind  and 
Nature  that  they  seek  for  a  solution  beyond  the  clouds. 

The  exaggerated  disparagement  of  the  mind  which  is 
said  not  to  be  able  to  illuminate  the  innermost  of  Nature, 
just  as  the  exaggerated  mystification  of  Nature  whose 
innermost  is  said  to  be  impenetrable  —  both  arise  out  of 
a  method  of  thinking  which  for  thousands  of  years  has, 
like  a  natural  growth,  dominated  mankind.  This  has 
now  changed;  the  efforts  of  philosophy  have  now  suc- 
ceeded at  last  in  making  man  the  master  of  his  way  of 
thinking, —  at  least  in  so  far  as  to  be  able  to  solve  the 
problems,  which  are  confronting  him,  with  more  skill 
and  method. 

Philosophy  has  discovered  the  art  of  thinking.  That 
it  has  thereby  occupied  itself  so  much  with  the  all-perfect 
Being,  with  the  conception  of  God,  with  the  "  Substance  " 
of  Spinoza,  with  the  "  thing  in  itself  "  of  Kant,  and  with 
the  "  Absolute  "  of  Hegel,  has  its  good  reason  in  the 
fact  that  the  sober  conception  of  the  Universe  as  of  the 
All-One  with  nothing  above  or  outside  or  alongside  of 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    2/5 

it,  is  the  first  postulate  of  a  skilled  and  consistent  mode 
of  thinking,  which  knows  both  of  itself  and  of  all  possi- 
ble and  impossible  objects  that  they  all  belong  to  one 
eternal  and  limitless  union  which  is  called  by  us  Cosmos, 
Nature  and  Universe. 

We  think  to  have  proved  thereby  that  a  higher  mind 
than  the  human  one  is  not  possible.  My  mind  and  thine 
are  limited  minds  because  they  are  only  parts  and  frag- 
ments of  the  human  mind  in  general.  The  minds  of  men 
are  connected  with  one  another,  one  supplements  the 
other,  one  learns  from  the  other,  and  this  connection 
forms  the  progressive,  developing  process  of  the  mind 
of  the  species.  "  On  the  tree  of  mankind  blossoms  sprout 
and  throng  upon  blossoms."  How  high  that  tree  may 
grow  yet,  we  do  not  know ;  but  that  it  will  not  grow 
right  into  heaven  —  that  we  know  a  priori,  positively, 
apodictically. 

We,  therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  assert,  we  do  not  know 
what  is  possible  for  Nature  to  accomplish.  She  may 
yet  in  the  long  run  bring  out  wonderful  things  such  as 
no  imagination  could  ever  have  dreamt  of.  And  yet  we 
assert,  on  the  other  hand,  that  we  know  apodictically 
what  is  impossible. 

How,  then,  does  it  stand  with  this  contradictory  knowl- 
edge of  the  Possible  and  Impossible? 

Quite  simply ;  our  undoubted  knowledge  of  the  im- 
possibility of  a  supernatural,  uncreated  mind  rests  on 
the  critique  of  reason  which  is  also  called  by  another 
name :  theory  of  cognition.  This  branch  of  study  has 
selected  as  its  special  object  of  inquiry  the  empirical  mind 
and  has  found  out  that  the  mind  possesses  the  undoubted 
conviction  of  the  universality  of  Nature,  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  unity,  infinity  and  immensity  is  innate  in 
it,  at  least  as  a  predisposition. 


2/6  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

The  parson  was  already  convinced  that  his  divine  om- 
nipotence can  do  nothing  bad.  Why  should  we  not  be 
convinced  that  the  natural  omnipotence,  the  creator  of 
the  human  reason,  can  not  have  created  anything  irra- 
tional, illogical  ?  There  is,  of  course,  enough  irrationality 
in  Nature,  that  is,  enough  which  is  comparatively  or  sec- 
ondarily irrational.  But  of  such  irrationality  as  would 
completely  and  absolutely  overstep  the  boundaries  of  its 
kind,  we"  cannot  even  conceive, —  Nature  simply  does  not 
permit  it  to  our  faculty  of  thinking.  She  has  endowed 
our  mind  with  the  conviction  that  she  cannot  be  irra- 
tional and  illogical  to  such  an  extent. 

The  omnipotent  Nature  has  created  Reason  and  im- 
planted in  it  the  consciousness  that  her  omnipotence  is  a 
rational  force  which  cannot  be  so  illogical  as  to  create 
minds  or  beings  which  are  still  more  omnipotent  than  the 
natural  omnipotence.  It  is  a  law  of  natural  logic  and 
logical  nature  that  everything  must  remain  within  the 
natural  species,  that  though  species  and  varieties  may 
change,  yet  not  so  extravagantly  as  to  outgrow  the  gen- 
eral species,  the  natural.  There  can,  therefore,  be  no 
mind  which  should  penetrate  so  deeply  into  the  inner- 
most of  Nature  as  to  be  able  to  clasp  her  and  pocket  her, 
as  it  were. 

Is  this  certainty,  given  to  us  by  Nature,  wonderful? 
Is  it  inexplicable  that  the  thinking  fragment  of  Nature 
should  possess  from  its  mother  the  conviction  that  the 
omnipotence  of  Nature  is  a  rational  omnipotence  ?  Would 
it  not  have  been  more  inexplicable  if  the  child  of  its 
mother  were  compelled  to  think  that  the  latter  is  omnipo- 
tent and  omnipresent  in  an  irrational  sense? 

Yes,  Nature  is  in  every  respect  wonderful  whether 
we  contemplate  her  in  a  superficial  manner  or  penetrate 
into  her  innermost  recesses.  But  withal,  her  natural 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY   277 

wonderfulness  is  explicable.  Still  more  wonderful,  how- 
ever, are  the  people  who  dream  of  an  intellect  wonderful 
beyond  all  measure,  in  comparison  with  which  the  won- 
derfulness of  Nature  would  be  trivial. 


II. 

THE  ABSOLUTE  TRUTH  AND  ITS  NATURAL  MANIFESTATIONS. 

Was  it  Goethe  or  Heine?  It  is  one  or  the  other  who 
said:  only  the  know-  and  have-nots  are  modest.  I  re- 
pudiate, accordingly,  all  such  modesty  because  I  believe 
myself  in  a  position  to  make  a  small  contribution  to  the 
great  work  of  science.  I  am  strengthened  in  this  belief 
by  the  May  number  of  the  Neue  Zeit  (1886),  where 
my  efforts  are  honorably  mentioned  by  our  highly  meri- 
torious Frederic  Engels  in  an  article  on  Ludwig  Feuer- 
bach.  In  such  cases  the  personal  and  objective  elements 
are  so  closely  bound  up  with  one  another  that  an  exag- 
gerated modesty  can  only  hinder  the  progress  of  the  ob- 
jective inquiry. 

The  things  which  I  am  going  to  discuss  here  were 
already  set  forth  by  me  some  seventeen  years  ago  in  an 
opuscle  which  then  appeared.  Yet  what  I  said  at  that 
time  is  so  scanty  that  in  view  of  the  progress  since  made 
on  the  subject  I  feel  justified  in  returning  to  it  once  more. 
Already  Hegel  said  in  his  preface  to  the  "  Phenomenology 
of  Mind"  quite  aptly:  "The  easiest  thing  is  to  judge 
what  has  substance  and  solidity ;  more  difficult  is  to  con- 
ceive it ;  and  most  difficult  of  all,  because  it  must  contain 
both  judgment  and  conception,  is  to  reproduce  it  by  de- 
scription." In  fully  endorsing  these  words  I  forbear  to 
give  an  adequate  presentation  of  the  case  now  before 
me ;  all  I  should  attempt  here  is  to  sketch  the  essence  of 
the  cherished  epistemological  question,  which  I  have  in 

278 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    279 

my  mind,  in  all  brevity  and  with  as  much  precision  as  I 
can  command.  I  hope  that  the  task  thus  defined  may 
justify  me  in  explaining  in  a  few  words  —  by  way  of 
elucidating  the  subject  —  how  I  came  across  it. 

The  year  1848  with  its  reactionaries,  constitutionalists, 
democrats  and  socialists  called  forth  in  my  then  youthful 
mind  an  irresistible  desire  to  acquire  a  critically  firm, 
undoubted  standpoint,  a  positive  opinion  as  to  what  in 
all  that  I  had  heard  and  read  for  and  against  was  abso- 
lutely and  unmistakably  true,  good  and  right.  As  I  had 
my  just  doubts  about  God  in  heavens,  and  the  church 
did  not  inspire  me  with  any  confidence  at  all,  I  found 
myself  amidst  the  greatest  perplexity,  not  knowing  how 
to  escape  from  the  situation.  While  on  search  I  came 
across  Ludwig  Feuerbach,  and  the  diligent  study  of  his 
writings  gave  me  a  good  push  forward.  Of  still  greater 
help  in  my  thirst  for  knowledge  was  the  "  Communist 
Manifesto,"  which  I  got  to  know  through  the  newspapers 
on  the  occasion  of  the  trial  of  the  Communists  at  Cologne 
(1849).  Most  of  all,  however,  I  owe,  after  a  number  of 
old  philosophical  volumes  had  in  the  meanwhile  appeared 
in  my  rural  life,  to  the  work  of  Marx  which  appeared  in 
1859  under  the  title:  "A  Contribution  to  the  Critique  of 
Political  Economy."  There  it  is  stated  in  the  preface 
that  the  way  —  so  approximately  runs  the  sentence  —  in 
which  man  earns  his  daily  bread,  that  the  level  of  civili- 
sation on  which  a  generation  physically  works,  determines 
the  mental  standpoint  or  the  way  in  which  it  conceives 
and  must  conceive  the  True,  the  Good  and  Right,  God, 
Freedom  and  Immortality,  Philosophy,  Politics  and  Law. 

Everything  that  I  have  studied  and  read  all  my  life 
referred  to  one  point  which  I  desired  and  made  mental 
efforts  to  grasp,  viz. :  how  to  attain  a  positive,  undoubted 
knowledge,  that  is,  to  a  criterion  of  what  is  true  and 


280  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

right.  The  above  passage  leads  us  to  the  true  path 
which  shows  how  it  altogether  stands  with  human  knowl- 
edge and  with  the  absolute  and  relative  truth. 

What  I  have  just  related  as  a  personal  experience  is 
the  experience  which  mankind,  too,  has  made  in  the  course 
of  centuries.  If  I  had  been  the  first  to  moot  these  ques- 
tions and  to  exhibit  the  thirst  for  the  absolute  truth,  I 
would  have  been  the  fool  to  wait  for  an  answer  in  all 
eternity.  The  fact,  however,  that  I  was  not  left  such  a 
fool,  but  received  a  sufficient  answer,  is  due  to  the  his- 
torical development  of  things  which  made  me  put  the 
questions  at  a  time  when  after  a  long  series  of  preceding 
generations  the  best  minds  had  occupied  themselves  with 
their  solution  and  could  already  supply  me  with  such 
elucidation  as  I  obtained,  in  point  of  fact,  from  Feuerbach 
and  Marx.  What  I  mean  to  say  by  this  is,  the  light 
which  those  men  gave  me  was  not  merely  the  product  of 
these  individuals,  but  it  was  the  common  product  of  cul- 
ture older  than  the  historical  times. 

At  first  sight  it  seems  as  if  there  was  little  agreement 
among  the  predecessors, —  who,  begining  with  the  Greek 
Thales  and  ending  with  the  Prussian  Jurgen  Bona  Meyer 
at  Bonn,  have  enquired  after  the  absolute  truth.  A  closer 
examination,  however,  will  reveal  the  red  line  which,  run- 
ning from  generation  to  generation,  becomes  ever  more 
distinct  and  patent.  It  is  the  lack  of  appreciation  of  the 
importance  of  the  historical  wrhich  even  now  misleads 
some  people  to  look  in  the  innermost  of  their  heads  for 
that  enlightenment  which  with  a  little  more  historical 
sense  they  would  have  found  in  the  products  matured  in 
the  gradual  development  of  science  through  the  long 
period  of  centuries. 

But  to  the  point.  By  way  of  reply  to  the  question, 
what  is  truth,  absolute  truth,  Pilate  shrugged  his  shoul- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EFISTEMOLOGY    28l 

ders  as  if  to  say,  that  is  too  high  for  me, —  go  and  ask 
the  High-Priest  Caiaphas.  The  latter  then  said  the  same 
which  priests  say  to  this  day :  God  is  truth, —  it  is  super- 
natural, super-earthly.  It  is  not  worth  while  at  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  trouble  myself  with 
the  refutation  of  such  an  answer.  On  the  other  hand, 
Pilates  are  still  too  numerously  represented  even  among 
the  leaders  of  science  to  hinder  a  rational  enlightenment 
on  that  point. 

To  understand  more  clearly  the  nature  of  the  absolute 
truth  it  is  first  of  all  necessary  to  do  away  with  the  old- 
rooted  prejudice  which  regards  it  as  of  a  purely  mental 
nature.  No,  no !  Absolute  truth  can  be  seen,  heard, 
smelt,  touched  and,  of  course,  also  known ;  but  it  cannot 
be  resolved  into  pure  knowledge, —  it  is  not  pure  mind. 
Its  nature  is  not  either  corporeal,  or  mental,  not  one  or 
the  other,  but  all  embracing,  as  much  corporeal  as  spir- 
itual. Absolute  truth  has  no  nature  of  its  own,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  it  has  the  nature  of  the  general.  In  other 
words,  to  speak  without  mystification,  the  general  natural 
nature  and  general  truth  are  identical.  There  are  no 
two  Natures,  one  corporeal  and  another  a  mental.  There 
is  only  one  Nature  which  contains  all  bodies  and  all 
minds. 

The  Universe  is  identical  with  Nature,  with  the  world 
and  the  absolute  truth.  Natural  science  divides  Nature 
into  parts,  domains,  branches  of  study,  but  it  knows  and 
feels  that  all  such  divisions  are  formal  only,  that  Nature 
or  Universe  is  in  spite  of  all  divisions  undivided, —  in 
spite  of  all  variety  and  manifold  natures  only  one  indi- 
visible, general  and  universal  Nature,  World  and  Truth. 
There  is  only  one  Existence,  and  all  forms  are  modi,  va- 
rieties or  relative  truths  of  one  general  truth  which  is 
absolute,  eternal  and  endless  at  all  times,  in  all  places. 


282  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Human  knowledge  is,  like  anything  else,  a  limited  por- 
tion of  the  unlimited,  a  modus,  a  variety  of  Existence 
or  General  Truth. 

Since  the  nature  of  truth  has  hitherto  been  regarded 
as  purely  mental,  and  accordingly,  truth  was  looked  upon 
as  a  thing  which  is  only  to  be  found  in  knowledge,  the 
inquiry  into  human  knowledge  comes  within  the  prov- 
ince of  our  subject,  of  our  search  after  the  absolute  and 
relative  truth  and  their  relation. 

The  mental  world  of  man,  that  is,  all  we  know,  believe 
and  think,  forms  a  portion  of  the  universal  world  which 
only  in  its  absolute  inter-relation,  in  its  complete  whole 
possesses  an  unlimited,  perfect,  absolute  existence,  a  true 
one  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word.  At  the  same  time 
it  possesses  through  its  component  parts,  modi,  varieties, 
products  or  phenomena  an  infinite  number  of  existences 
of  which  every  particular  one  is  also  true,  but  is  as 
against  the  whole  a  mere  relative  truth. 

Human  knowledge,  itself  a  relative  truth,  is  the  me- 
dium between  us  and  the  other  phenomena  or  relativities 
of  the  absolute  Existence.  Still  the  faculty  of  cognition, 
the  knowing  subject,  must  be  distinguished  from  the  ob- 
ject, the  distinction  being,  however,  a  limited  and  relative 
one,  since  both  the  subject  and  the  object  are  not  only 
distinct,  but  at  the  same  time  alike  in  that  they  are  parts 
or  phenomena  of  the  same  generality  called  the  Universe. 
We  distinguish  between  Nature  and  parts,  departments 
or  phenomena,  though  these  are  inseparably  connected 
with  the  All-Existence,  emerge  from  it  and  submerge 
in  it.  There  is  no  Nature  without  phenomena,  her  mani- 
festations, nor  phenomena  without  Nature,  as  the  Abso- 
lute. It  is  only  our  knowledge  which  provides  the  sepa- 
ration, the  mental  analysis  in  order  to  form  an  image  of 
the  phenomena.  Knowledge,  conscious  of  its  doings  and 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    283 

dealings,  must  know  that  the  mentally  separated,  differ- 
entiated objects  are  indivisibly  bound  up  with  the  reality 
of  Nature. 

What  we  learn  to  know  are  truths,  relative  truths  or 
natural  phenomena.  Nature  itself,  the  absolute  truth, 
cannot  be  known, —  not  directly,  but  only  through  her 
manifestations,  the  phenomena.  How  then  do  we  know 
that  there  is  behind  the  phenomenon  an  absolute  Truth, 
a  general  Nature?  Is  this  not  a  new  mysticism? 

Well,  let  us  see.  As  human  knowledge  is  not  the  ab- 
solute truth,  but  only  an  artist  making  pictures  of  the 
truth,  true,  genuine,  correct  and  exact  pictures,  it  is  self- 
evident  that  the  picture  does  not  exhaust  the  object  and 
that  the  artist  cannot  reach  the  comprehensiveness  of  the 
model.  Nothing  more  insipid  has  ever  been  said  of  truth 
and  knowledge  than  what  has  been  repeated  for  thou- 
sands of  years  by  the  commonly  accepted  logic,  namely, 
that  truth  is  the  conformity  of  our  knowledge  with  its 
object.  How  can  a  picture  "  conform  "  with  its  model? 
Approximately  it  can.  What  picture  worth  the  name 
does  not  agree  approximately  with  its  object?  Every 
portrait  is  more  or  less  of  a  likeness.  But  to  be  alto- 
gether alike,  quite  the  same  as  the  original  —  what  an 
abnormal  idea! 

Thus  we  can  only  know  Nature  and  her  parts  rela- 
tively, since  even  a  part,  though  only  a  relation  of  Na- 
ture, possesses  again  the  characteristics  of  the  Absolute, 
the  nature  of  the  All-Existence  which  cannot  be  ex- 
hausted by  knowledge. 

How,  then,  do  we  know  that  behind  the  phenomena  of 
Nature,  behind  the  relative  truths,  there  is  a  universal, 
unlimited,  absolute  Nature  which  does  not  reveal  itself 
completely  to  man  ?  Our  vision  is  limited,  so  are  also  our 
hearing,  touch,  etc.,  and  our  knowledge;  yet  we  know  of 


284  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

all  these  things  that  they  are  limited  parts  of  the  Unlim- 
ited. Whence  that  knowledge? 

It  is  innate ;  it  is  given  to  us  with  consciousness.  The 
consciousness  of  man  is  the  knowledge  of  his  personality 
as  part  of  the  human  species,  of  mankind  and  of  the 
Universe.  To  know  is  to  form  pictures  in  the  conscious- 
ness that  they  are  pictures  of  things  which  all,  both  the 
pictures  and  the  things,  possess  a  general  mother  from 
which  they  have  issued  and  to  which  they  will  return. 
This  mother  is  the  absolute  truth;  she  is  perfectly  true 
and  yet  mystical  in  a  natural  way,  that  is,  she  is  the  inex- 
haustible source  of  knowledge  and  consequently  never 
entirely  to  be  comprehended. 

All  that  is  known  in  and  of  the  world  is,  however  true 
and  exact,  only  a  known  truth,  therefore  a  modified  truth, 
a  modus  or  part  of  truth.  When  I  say  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  endless,  absolute  truth  is  innate  in  us, 
is  one  and  the  only  knowledge  a  priori,  I  am  confirmed 
in  my  statement  also  by  the  experience  of  this  innate 
consciousness.  We  learn  that  every  beginning  and  end 
are  only  a  relative  beginning  and  end,  at  the  bottom  of 
which  lies  the  Inexhaustible  by  all  experience,  the  Ab- 
solute. We  learn  by  experience  that  each  experience 
is  only  a  part  of  that  which,  in  the  words  of  Kant,  sur- 
passes all  experience. 

The  mystic  of  a  fantastical  character  will,  perhaps, 
say:  then,  there  is  something  after  all  which  surpasses 
the  limits  of  physical  experience.  We  reply,  yes  and 
no  at  the  same  time.  In  the  sense  of  the  old  exaggerat- 
ing metaphysician,  there  is  nothing  of  this  kind.  In  the 
sense  of  the  cognition  conscious  of  its  nature,  each  parti- 
cle, be  it  of  dust  or  of  stone  or  of  wood,  is  incomprehensi- 
ble as  to  its  whole  extent,  each  particle  being  an  inex- 
haustible material  for  the  human  faculty  of  cognition, 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    285 

consequently  something  which  surpasses  all  experience. 

When  I  say  that  the  consciousness  of  the  absence  of  a 
beginning  and  end  of  the  physical  world  is  an  innate 
consciousness  which  is  not  acquired  by  experience, —  in 
other  words,  that  it  is  a  consciousness  which  is  given  a 
priori  and  precedes  all  experience,  I  must  still  add,  that 
originally  it  is  only  given  as  a  germ  and  that  it  has  de- 
veloped to  what  it  is  now  through  experience  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  and  through  sexual  selection. 

In  so  far  the  knowledge  of  the  Universe  as  the  abso- 
lute truth  is,  too,  an  empirical  knowledge  which,  just 
like  every  other  knowledge  and  like  every  other  thing,  is 
given  a  priori  as  a  germ  and  originates  in  the  Endlessness. 
Hence  it  follows  that  the  human  mind,  which  has  clearly 
conceived  the  relation  between  the  universal  truth  and 
the  natural  phenomena,  will  no  longer  separate  in  an  ex- 
aggerated way  the  knowledge  gained  by  experience  from 
the  innate  faculty  of  knowledge,  cognition,  etc. 

Mysticism  of  this  kind  is  not  of  the  nebulous,  morbid 
sprt  such  as  the  one  which  teaches  us  that  the  human 
faculty  of  cognition  is  too  narrow  to  know  the  absolute 
truth.  The  human  intellect  is  too  small  to  exhaust  by 
study  the  smallest  particle  as  well  as  the  whole  of  Na- 
ture. But  since  such  inexhaustibility  or  endlessness  is  a 
predicate  which  applies  to  all  things  without  exception, 
and  consequently,  to  our  faculty  of  cognition  also,  it  is 
sheer  humbug  to  make  much  capital  out  of  it  as  was  the 
custom  until  now. 

Morbid  mysticism  separates  unscientifically  the  abso- 
lute truth  from  the  relative  truth.  It  makes  of  the  phe- 
nomenal thing  and  of  the  "  thing  in  itself,"  that  is,  of 
the  phenomenon  and  truth,  two  categories  which  differ 
completely  from  each  other  and  are  not  contained  in  one 
united  category.'  This  nebulous  mysticism  turns  our 


286  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

knowledge  and  faculty  of  cognition  into  mere  substitutes 
which  have  to  suggest  to  us  a  superhuman  monstrous 
mind  somewhere  in  the  transcendental  heavens. 

Humility  is  always  becoming  to  man.  Yet  the  state- 
ment of  the  inability  of  man  to  know  the  truth  has  a 
double  sense, —  one  that  is  worthy  and  one  that  is  un- 
worthy of  man.  Everything  which  we  know,  all  scien- 
tific results,  all  phenomena  are  parts  of  the  genuine,  the 
right,  the  absolute  truth.  Though  the  latter  is  inexhaust- 
ible and  cannot  with  full  perfection  be  portrayed  in 
knowledge  or  pictured  in  the  mind,  yet  the  pictures, 
which  science  is  able  to  show  of  it,  are  exact  pictures 
in  the  humanly  relative  sense  of  the  word.  Just  so  the 
sentences  which  I  am  now  writing  down  here  have  an 
exact,  rational  sense  and  yet  have  not,  if  one  likes  to  per- 
vert or  misunderstand  them. 

Granted  that  truth  cannot  be  exhausted  by  knowledge. 
Still  it  is  not  so  far  removed  from  our  cognition  as  the 
fantastical  mystics  assume  who  are  not  satisfied  with  the 
human  mind,  because  they  carry  about  in  their  head  the 
fantasy  of  a  superhuman  monstrous  mind. 

Scientific  cognition  must  not  long  after  absolute  truth 
because  that  truth  is  given  to  us  by  means  of  our  senses 
as  well  as  of  our  mind  without  further  search.  It  is  in 
reality  the  phenomena,  the  special  manifestations  of  the 
given  general  truth,  which  we  want  to  know.  Such 
truth  readily  yields  itself  to  us  in  its  particular  phenome- 
non. It  is  exact  pictures,  genuine  knowledge  which  our 
cognition  has  to  provide.  And  the  question  here  deals 
only  with  relative  exactness  or  completeness.  More  must 
not  be  wished  for  by  human  reason.  This  is  no  resigna- 
tion as  the  monks  recommend.  We  are  able  to  know  the 
truth  —  it  yields  to  us  readily.  But  it  is  quite  natural 
that  we  cannot  jump  out  of  our  skin.  It  may  also  be 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    287 

natural  that  there  should  be  metaphysical  and  religious 
dreamers  who  still  go  about  with  such  an  intention. 
Their  quest  after  another  absolute  truth  is  a  dream  which 
the  history  of  human  knowledge  has  left  far  behind  it, 
whilst  the  modesty  which  is  satisfied  with  the  knowledge 
of  relative  truth  is  called  rational  enlightenment. 

Spinoza  says,  there  is  only  one  substance, —  it  is  uni- 
versal, endless  or  absolute.  All  other  finite  so-called 
substances  originate  in  it,  emerge  from  it  and  submerge 
in  it;  they  only  have  a  relative,  transient,  accidental  ex- 
istence. All  finite  things  are  to  Spinoza,  and  justly  so, 
mere  modi  of  the  endless  substance,  as  confirmed  by  our 
modern  natural  science  in  its  doctrine  of  the  eternity  of 
matter  and  conservation  of  force.  Only  in  one  thing, 
and  that  a  very  essential  one,  Spinoza  had  to  be  cor- 
rected by  the  subsequent  philosophy. 

According  to  Spinoza,  the  endless,  absolute  substance 
possesses  two  attributes:  it  is  infinitely  extended  and  it 
thinks  infinitely.  Thought  and  extension  are  the  two 
Spinozist  attributes  of  the  absolute  substance.  This  is 
wrong,  especially  as  there  is  nothing  which  could  sup- 
port the  proposition  of  the  absolute  thinking.  And  the 
absolute  extension,  too,  explains  very  little.  The  world, 
or  the  absolute,  or  Nature,  or  the  Universe,  or  whatever 
else  the  thing  of  things,  the  One  and  Infinite  is  called, 
extend  infinitely  both  in  time  and  space;  yet  every  little 
space  of  the  Space,  and  every  particle  of  Time  as  well 
as  every  other  thing  which  is  contained  in  it,  is  an  indi- 
vidual, changeable,  transient,  limited  thing,  and  thinking 
forms  no  exception  to  this  limitation  and  finity. 

Our  present  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  thought  and 
thinking  far  surpasses  that  of  Spinoza  in  clearness  and 
definiteness.  We  now  know  that  thinking  or  conscious- 
ness is  no  mysterious  depository  of  truth,  but  rather  in 


288  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

its  true  nature  possesses  no  other  nature  than  the  natural 
one  of  which  all  other  things  participate.  It  is  as  much 
trivial  as  mysterious,  and,  though  an  unlimited  object  of 
study,  yet  no  more  unlimited  than  any  other  particular 
matter  or  force. 

What  is  called  by  Spinoza  the  endless  substance,  and 
what  we  call  the  Universe  or  the  absolute  truth,  is  as 
identical  with  its  finite  phenomena,  with  the  relative 
truths  which  we  meet  in  the  Universe,  as  the  forest  is 
identical  with  its  trees,  or  in  general,  as  the  species  with 
its  varieties.  The  relative  and  the  absolute  do  not  lie  so 
far  apart  as  it  is  painted  to  man  by  that  uncultivated  sense 
of  infinity  which  is  called  Religion.  And  the  branch 
of  study,  too,  which  is  called  speculative  Philosophy  was 
permeated  by  religion  and  proceeded  from  that  ignorance 
which  did  not  perceive  the  relative  position  of  the  human 
mind  to  the  absolute  truth.  The  branch  of  study  which 
strove  after  a  clear  idea  of  the  mind  was  from  its  begin- 
ning to  the  very  last  classical  philosophers  biased  by  in- 
consistent extravagance.  It  fails  to  perceive  that  every- 
thing which  is  relative,  and  the  faculty  of  cognition,  too, 
is  contained  in  the  Absolute  precisely  in  the  same  way  — 
I  repeat  the  analogy  —  as  trees  are  contained  in  the  for- 
est. It  misses  the  essence  of  all  logic,  viz.,  that  all  spe- 
cialties without  any  exception  are  contained  in  one  spe- 
cies and  all  species  in  one  general  species,  the  Universe, 
which  is  the  absolute  truth. 

Philosophy,  like  Religion,  lived  in  the  belief  in  a  super- 
natural absolute  truth.  The  solution  of  the  problem  lies 
in  the  conception  that  the  absolute  truth  is  nothing  but 
the  generalized  truth,  that  the  latter  dwells  not  in  the 
mind  —  at  least,  not  more  than  anywhere  else  —  but  in 
the  object  contemplated  by  the  mind,  which  we  designate 
by  the  general  term,  the  Universe. 


EXCURSIONS   INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    289 

The  transcendental  absolute  truth  which  Religion  and 
Philosophy  used  to  call  God,  was  a  mystification  of  the 
human  mind  which  in  its  turn  mystified  itself  with  this 
fantastical  picture.  The  philosopher  Kant,  who  dealt 
with  the  critique  of  the  faculty  of  cognition,  found  out 
that  man  cannot  know  the  transcendental  absolute  truth. 
We  may  add:  man  cannot  know  the  prosaic,  every-day 
things,  either,  in  a  transcendental  absolute  manner. 
When,  however,  he  uses  his  faculty  in  a  sober  and  rela- 
tive way  as  one  has  to  consider  all  circumstances  rela- 
tively, as  soon  as  he  rids  himself  of  his  supernatural 
bias,  then  everything  is  to  him  open  and  nothing  closed, 
and  he  can  also  grasp  and  know  the  general  truth. 

Just  as  our  eye,  be  it  with  the  assistance  of  glasses, 
can  see  everything  and  yet  not  everything,  since  it  can 
neither  see  sounds  nor  smells,  nor,  in  general,  anything 
invisible,  so  our  faculty  of  cognition  can  know  everything 
and  yet  not  everything.  It  cannot  know  the  unknowa- 
ble. But  this  is  plainly  enough  only  a  fantastical  or  a 
transcendental  desire. 

When  we  recognize  that  the  absolute  truth  which  was 
sought  by  Religion  and  Philosophy  in  the  region  of  the 
transcendental,  is  close  at  hand  in  its  full  reality  as  the 
bodily  Universe,  and  that  the  human  mind  is  a  real,  or 
actual  and  active  part  of  the  general  truth,  having  the 
mission  to  form  true  pictures  of  the  parts  of  the  general 
truth,  then  we  have  the  problem  of  the  limited  and  un- 
limited completely  solved.  The  Absolute  and  the  Rela- 
tive are  not  separated  transcendentally,  they  are  con- 
nected with  each  other  so  that  the  Unlimited  is  made  up 
of  an  infinite  number  of  finite  limitations  and  each  lim- 
ited phenomenon  possesses  the  nature  of  the  Infinite. 

How  and  in  what  way  the  things  said  here  bear  upon 
the  passage  from  Marx  quoted  at  the  beginning,  that 


29O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

is,  upon  the  true,  good  and  right  in  political  and  social 
life,  I  must  leave  meanwhile  to  the  reader  to  find  out  for 
himself,  as  a  detailed  elucidation  of  it  would  take  up  too 
much  space  here.  Perhaps,  I  may  yet  find  the  oppor- 
tunity to  return  to  tHat  reference  at  another  time.1 

1  Find    the    explanation    in    the    next    chapter. — EDITOR. 


III. 

MATERIALISM     VERSUS     MATERIALISM. 

"  The  insight,"  says  Frederic  Engels,  "  gained  into  the 
utter  perversity  of  the  hitherto  prevailing  German  ideal- 
ism led  necessarily  to  materialism,  but,  of  course,  not  to 
the  mere  metaphysical  materialism  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury." 

This  modern  materialism  which  is  here  derived  from 
the  total  perversion  of  German  idealism  and  of  which 
Engels  himself  is  one  of  the  founders,  is  little  under- 
stood, though  it  forms  the  fundamental  basis  of  the 
theory  of  German  Social-Democracy.  We  propose, 
therefore,  to  make  it  the  subject  of  a  somewhat  detailed 
examination. 

This  specifically  German,  or,  if  you  like,  Social-Demo- 
cratic materialism,  can  best  be  characterized  by  com- 
paring it  with  the  "  metaphysical,  exclusively  mechanical 
materialism  of  the  i8th  century ;  "  and  when  we  further 
confront  it  with  the  German  idealism  from  the  perversity 
of  which  it  sprang,  the  character  of  the  Social-Democratic 
basis,  which,  owing  to  its  materialist  name,  is  easily  ex- 
posed to  misrepresentation,  must  clearly  reveal  itself. 

And  first  of  all,  why  does  Engels  call  the  materialism 
of  the  i8th  century  "metaphysical?"  Metaphysicians 
were  people  who  were  not  satisfied  with  the  physical 
or  natural  world,  but  always  carried  about  the  idea  of  a 
supernatural,  metaphysical  world.  Kant  in  his  preface 
to  the  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  sums  up  the  problem 

291 


PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

of  metaphysics  in  three  words:  God,  Freedom  and  Im- 
mortality. One  knows  now  that  God  was  a  spirit,  a 
supernatural  spirit,  who  created  the  natural,  physical, 
material  world.  The  celebrated  materialists  of  the  i8th 
century  were  no  friends  or  worshippers  of  this  biblical 
story.  The  problem  of  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality, 
so  far  as  it  refers  to  a  supernatural  world,  left  those 
atheists  thoroughly  indifferent.  They  stuck  to  the  phys- 
ical world  and  were  so  far  no  metaphysicians. 

It  is  evident  that  Engels  uses  the  word  in  a  different 
sense. 

Of  the  primary  great  mind  beyond  the  clouds  the 
French  and  English  materialists  of  the  i8th  century  had 
disposed  completely  enough ;  but  they  could  not  help  oc- 
cupying themselves  with  the  secondary  human  mind.  It 
is  the  difference  in  the  conception  of  this  mind,  its  nature, 
its  origin  and  its  constitution  which  distinguishes  the 
materialists  from  the  idealists.  The  latter  regard  the 
human  mind  and  its  ideas  as  children  of  a  supernatural, 
metaphysical  world.  Still  they  have  not  been  content 
with  the  mere  belief  in  such  a  distant  origin,  but  rather 
strove,  since  the  very  days  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  to  sup- 
ply this  belief  with  a  scientific  basis,  to  prove  it,  to  eluci- 
date it,  just  as  one  proves  and  elucidates  physical  things 
of  the  tangible  world.  In  this  way  the  idealist  brought 
the  knowledge  about  the  nature  of  the  human  mind  down 
from  the  transcendental,  metaphysical  world  to  the  real, 
physical,  material  world  which  reveals  itself  as  a  dia- 
lectical or  evolutionary  process,  where  mind  and  matter, 
though  two,  are  yet  one,  that  is,  twin  children  springing 
from  one  blood,  from  one  mother. 

The  idealists  originally  favored  the  religious  notion 
that  the  world  was  created  by  a  spirit.  In  this  they  were 
completely  wrong,  since  it  finally,  as  a  result  of  their 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY 

efforts,  became  evident  that  it  is  precisely  the  natural 
material  world  which  is  the  original ;  that  this  was  created 
by  no  spirit,  but  on  the  contrary,  the  natural  or  material 
world  itself  is  the  creator  which  brought  forth  and  de- 
veloped man  with  his  intellect  out  of  itself.  Thus  it  was 
discovered  that  the  supreme  uncreated  spirit  is  but  a 
fantastical  image  of  the  natural  mind  which  has  developed 
in,  and  together  with,  the  human  nervous  system  and  its 
brainy  skull. 

Idealism,  which  derives  its  name  from  the  circumstance 
that  it  sets  the  idea  and  the  ideas,  those  products  of  the 
human  head,  above  and  before  the  material  world  —  both 
in  point  of  time  and  importance,  this  idealism  has  started 
very  extravagantly  and  metaphysically.  In  the  course 
of  its  history,  however,  this  extravagance  has  toned  down 
and  become  more  and  more  sober  till  Kant  himself  an- 
swered the  question  which  he  had  set  out  to  solve,  viz. : 
"  Is  Metaphysics  at  all  possible  as  a  science  ?  "  in  the 
negative ;  Metaphysics  as  a  science  is  not  possible ;  an- 
other world,  that  is,  a  transcendental  world  can  only  be 
believed  and  supposed.  Thus  the  perversion  of  idealism 
has  become  already  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  modern  ma- 
terialism is  the  result  of  the  philosophical  and  also  of  the 
general  scientific  development. 

Because  the  idealist  perversity  in  its  last  representa- 
tives, namely  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  was 
thoroughly  German,  its  issue,  dialectical  materialism,  is 
also  a  preeminently  German  product. 

Idealism  derives  the  corporeal  world  from  the  mind, 
quite  after  the  fashion  of  religion  where  the  great  spirit 
floats  over  the  waters  and  has  only  to  say :  "  Let  there 
be,"  and  it  is.  Such  idealist  derivation  is  metaphysical. 
Yet,  as  mentioned  already,  the  last  great  representatives 
of  German  idealism  were  metaphysicians  of  a  very  mod- 


294  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

erate  type.  They  had  already  emancipated  themselves 
considerably  from  the  transcendental,  supernatural,  heav- 
enly mind, —  not,  however,  from  the  spell-bound  worship 
of  the  natural  mind  of  the  world.  The  Christians  deified 
the  mind,  and  the  philosophers  were  still  permeated  to 
such  an  extent  with  this  deification,  that  they  were  unable 
to  relinquish  it  —  even  when  the  physical  human  mind 
had  already  become  the  sober  object  of  their  study  — 
making  this  intellect  of  ours  the  creator  or  parent  of  the 
material  world.  They  never  tire  in  their  efforts  to  arrive 
at  a  clear  understanding  of  the  relation  between  our.  men- 
tal conceptions  and  the  material  things  which  are  repre- 
sented, conceived  and  thought. 

To  us,  dialectical  or  Social-Democratic  materialists,  the 
mental  faculty  of  thinking  is  a  developed  product  of  ma- 
terial Nature,  whilst  according  to  the  German  idealism 
the  relation  is  quite  the  reverse.  That  is  why  Engels 
speaks  of  the  perversity  of  this  mode  of  thinking.  The 
extravagant  worship  of  the  mind  was  the  survival  of  the 
old  metaphysics. 

The  English  and  French  materialists  of  the  i8th  cen- 
tury were,  so  to  speak,  too  hasty  opponents  of  this  sort 
of  worship.  This  over-hastiness  prevented  them  from 
emancipating  themselves  from  it  thoroughly.  They  were 
extravagantly  radical  and  fell  into  the  opposite  perversity. 
Just  as  the  philosophic  idealists  were  worshipping  the 
mind  and  the  mental,  so  were  the  materialists  worship- 
ping the  body  and  the  corporeal.  The  idealist  over- 
estimated the  idea,  the  materialist  matter,  both  were 
dreamers  and  in  so  far  metaphysicians,  both  distinguished 
mind  and  matter  in  a  fantastic,  unreal  way.  Neither  of 
them  raised  themselves  to  the  consciousness  of  unity  and 
monism,  generality  and  universality  of  Nature  which  is 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    295 

not  either  material  or  mental,  but  is  one  as  well  as  the 
other. 

The  metaphysical  materialists  of  the  i8th  century  and 
their  present  followers  —  for  there  are  still  some  of  them 
among  us  —  undervalue  the  human  mind  and  the  inquiry 
into  the  constitution  and  its  proper  use  just  as  much  as 
the  idealists  overvalue  them.  They,  the  materialists,  pro- 
claim, for  instance,  that  the  forces  of  Nature  are  prop- 
erties of  matter,  and  that  especially  the  mental  force,  the 
force  of  thought,  is  the  property  of  brain.  Matter  or 
the  material,  i.  e.,  the  ponderable  and  the  tangible,  is  in 
their  eyes  the  main  thing  in  the  world,  the  primary  sub- 
stance, while  the  mental  energy,  like  all  non-tangible 
energies,  is  but  a  secondary  property.  In  other  words, 
ponderable  matter  is  to  the  old  materialists  the  exalted 
subject,  and  all  other  things  subordinate  predicates. 

There  is  in  this  mode  of  thinking  an  exaggeration  of 
the  importance  of  the  subject  and  a  disparagement  of  the 
predicate.  The  fact  is  lost  sight  of  that  the  relation  be- 
tween the  subject  and  the  predicate  is  a  variable  one. 
The  human  mind  may  legitimately  turn  every  predicate 
into  a  subject,  and  vice  versa,  every  subject  into  a  predi- 
cate. The  snow-white  color  is,  if  not  tangible,  at  least 
as  substantial  as  the  color-white  snow.  To  think  that 
matter  is  the  substance  or  the  main  thing,  and  its  predi- 
cates or  properties  are  mere  subordinate  appendices,  is  an 
antiquated,  narrow  way  of  thinking  which  has  taken  no  ' 
notice  of  the  work  of  the  German  dialecticians.  It  must 
now  be  understood  that  subjects  are  composed  exclusive- 
ly of  predicates. 

The  statement  that  thought  is  a  secretion,  a  product  of 
the  brain,  as  bile  is  a  secretion  of  the  liver,  tells  us  some- 
thing that  is  unquestionable.  Yet,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  analogy  is  a  very  bad,  a  faulty  one.  The  liver, 


296  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

the  subject  of  this  observation,  is  something  tangible 
and  ponderable;  likewise  the  bile  which  is  said  to  be  the 
predicate  or  the  effect  of  the  liver.  In  this  illustration 
both  the  subject  and  the  predicate,  both  the  liver  and  the 
bile,  are  ponderable  and  tangible,  and  it  is  this  circum- 
stance which  conceals  what  the  materialists  wish  to  con- 
vey when  they  represent  the  bile  as  the  effect  and  the 
liver  as  the  superior  cause.  We  must  therefore  specially 
emphasize  what  in  this  case  is  not  at  all  disputed,  but 
what  in  the  relation  between  the  brain  and  mental  energy 
is  entirely  lost  sight  of, —  namely,  that  the  bile  is  not  so 
much  the  effect  of  the  liver  as  the  effect  of  the  life-proc- 
ess as  a  whole.  In  the  life-process  of  human  nature  as 
in  the  cosmic  life-process  of  the  natural  Universe  the 
liver  and  the  bile  are  of  equal  standing  and  equally  subor- 
dinate, equally  cause  and  equally  effect,  equally  subject 
and  equally  predicate. 

By  saying  that  bile  is  a  product  of  the  liver  the  ma- 
terialists do  not  in  the  least  wish  to  deny  that  both  are 
of  equal  value  as  subjects  of  scientific  research.  When, 
however,  it  is  stated  that  consciousness,  the  faculty  of 
cognition,  is  a  property  of  the  brain,  the  tangible  subject 
appears  to  them  as  the  sole  object  worthy  of  study,  while 
the  mental  predicate  is  a  mere  settled  thing  as  it  were. 

We  call  this  mode  of  thinking  of  mechanical  material- 
ism narrow  because  it  makes  the  tangible  and  the  pon- 
derable the  subject,  the  depositary  of  all  properties,  and 
that  to  such  an  extent  as  to  overlook  entirely  that  in  the 
Universe  the  transcendentally  extolled  palpability  plays 
precisely  the  same  subordinate  predicative  part  as  every 
other  subordinate  subject  of  General  Nature. 

The  relation  between  subject  and  predicate  explains 
neither  matter  nor  thought.  Still  in  order  to  elucidate 
the  connection  between  the  brain  and  the  mental  energy 


EXCURSIONS   INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    297 

it  is  necessary  to  elucidate  the  connection  between  subject 
and  predicate. 

We  shall,  perhaps,  come  nearer  to  the  point,  if  we 
select  another  example,  an  example  where  the  subject  is 
material,  but  the  predicate  is  such  as  makes  it  at  least 
doubtful,  whether  it  is  material  or  mental.  If,  for  in- 1 
stance,  the  legs  walk,  the  eyes  see,  the  ears  hear,  it  is 
questionable  whether  the  subject  and  its  predicate  belong 
together  to  the  domain  of  the  material ;  whether  the  light 
which  is  seen,  the  sound  which  is  heard,  and  the  move- 
ment which  is  effected  by  the  legs  are  something  ma- 
terial or  immaterial.  The  eyes,  ears,  and  legs  are  tangi- 
ble and  ponderable  subjects,  while  the  predicates  —  vision 
and  its  light,  hearing  and  its  sound,  movement  and  its 
steps  (apart  from  the  legs  which  do  the  pacing)  can 
neither  be  touched  nor  weighed. 

Now,  how  great  or  small  is  the  conception  of  matter? 
Do  colors,  light,  sound,  space,  time,  heat  and  electricity 
belong  to  it,  or  must  we  relegate  them  to  a  different  cate- 
gory? With  the  formal  distinction  between  subjects  and 
predicates,  things  and  properties,  causes  and  effects,  the 
question  is  by  no  means  disposed  of.  When  the  eye  sees, 
the  palpable  eye  is,  of  course,  the  subject.  But  one  is 
also  justified  to  reverse  the  expression  and  to  say,  that  the 
imponderable  vision,  the  forces  of  light  and  vision  are 
the  main  things,  the  subjects,  while  the  material  eye  is 
a  mere  instrument,  a  secondary  thing,  attribute  or  predi- 
cate. 

So  much  is  evident :  matter  has  no  greater  importance 
than  the  forces,  and  the  forces  have  no  greater  impor- 
tance than  matter.  Materialism  is  narrow  when  it  gives 
matter  the  preference  and  waxes  in  enthusiasm  over  the 
material  at  the  expense  of  the  forces.  Those  who  assume 
the  forces  to  be  mere  properties  or  predicates  of  matter 


298  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

are  badly  informed  of  the  relativity,  or  the  variability  of 
the  difference  between  substance  and  property. 

The  conception  of  matter  and  the  material  has  hitherto 
been  very  confused.  Just  as  the  lawyers  cannot  agree 
as  to  the  first  day  of  life  of  the  child  in  the  womb,  or  as 
the  philologists  continually  dispute  what  is  to  be  taken 
as  the  beginning  of  speech,  whether  the  alluring  cries  and 
love  songs  of  birds  are  speech  or  not,  or  whether  speech 
by  mimics  or  gestures  are  of  the  same  category  as  vocal 
speech,  so  also  do  the  materialists  of  the  old  school  con- 
tinually dispute  as  to  what  is  matter, —  whether  it  is 
merely  the  tangible  and  ponderable  which  ought  to  be 
regarded  as  such,  or  also  the  visible,  smellable,  audible 
and  finally  the  whole  Nature,  including  even  the  human 
mind  which  is  also  an  object  of  study,  namely,  of  episte- 
mology. 

We  see,  the  distinguishing  mark  between  the  mechan- 
ical materialists  of  the  i8th  century  and  the  Social-Demo- 
cratic materialists  trained  in  German  idealism  consists 
in  that  the  latter  have  extended  the  former's  narrow  con- 
ception of  matter  as  consisting  exclusively  of  the  Tangi- 
ble to  all  phenomena  that  occur  in  the  world. 

There  is  nothing  to  say  against  the  transcendental  ma- 
terialists distinguishing  between  the  tangible  and  pon- 
derable, on  the  one  hand,  and  the  smellable,  audible  and 
visible  and  even  the  world  of  thought,  on  the  other.  We 
only  object  to  their  carrying  this  distinction  beyond  rea- 
sonable bounds,  failing  thereby  to  see  the  common  and 
kindred  nature  of  things  or  properties, —  in  other  words, 
we  object  to  their  distinction  becoming,  metaphysical, 
thereby  missing  the  significance  of  the  common  category 
which  embraces  all  opposites  and  contrasts. 

The  old  materialists  dealt  in  irreconcilable  opposites 
just  like  the  perverted  idealists.  Both  place  cognition 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    299 

and  its  material  too  far  from  each  other,  they  magnify 
the  opposition  in  an  unnatural  manner,  and  that  is  why 
Engels  calls  their  mode  of  thinking  "  metaphysical." 
An  example  to  illustrate  this  is  the  common  way  of 
thinking  which  forgets  that  death  which  concludes  life 
is  but  an  act  of  life  and  stands  in  the  same  connected 
relation  with  life  as  might  be  seen  in  the  opposition  be- 
tween word  and  deed  where  a  little  thought  will  show 
that  word  is,  after  all,  deed  too  —  words  are  ideas  em- 
bodied by  an  act  of  will  —  thus  confirming  our  view  that 
"  metaphysical  "  distinctions  are  inadmissible. 

Modern  science  is  even  to-day  still  animated  by  the 
bias  of  the  materialists  of  the  i8th  century.  These  ma- 
terialists were  the  general  theoreticians,  the  philosophers 
of  natural  science,  so  to  speak,  in  so  far  as  the  latter 
confines  its  study  to  the  mechanical,  that  is  the  palpable, 
the  ponderable  and  tangible.  Natural  science,  of  course, 
has  begun  long  since  to  overstep  these  limits.  Already 
Chemistry  has  led  beyond  the  narrow  boundaries  of  the 
mechanical,  and  the  same  is  now  being  done  in  Physics 
by  the  theory  of  the  conservation  and  transformation  of 
energy.  With  all  that,  however,  science  is  narrow  and 
wanting  in  penetration,  it  still  lacks  a  systematic  theory 
of  the  Universe  as  an  infinite  monistic  evolutionary  proc- 
ess. The  study  of  the  human  mind  and  of  all  those  rela- 
tions which  cognition  has  effected  in  human  history,  that 
is,  the  things  political,  judicial,  economical,  etc.,  all  this 
natural  science  excludes  from  its  province,  still  laboring 
under  the  delusion  that  mind  is  something  metaphysical, 
is  a  child  of  another  world  and  not  subject  to  the  laws 
governing  the  Universe. 

Science  deserves  that  reproach  not  because  it  separates 
the  mechanical,  chemical,  electro-technical  and  other 
knowledge  from  one  another  and  constitutes  them  special 


3<DO  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

branches;  this  is  quite  legitimate;  our  reproach  is  only 
directed  against  the  metaphysical  mode  of  thinking  in 
which  science  is  caught,  as  it  were,  in  a  straight- jacket,  as 
is  evidenced  by  its  hard  and  fast  distinctions  and  by  its 
absolute  separation  of  matter  from  mind.  It  is  only  in 
so  far  as  it  does  not  perceive  that  Politics,  Logic,  History, 
Law,  and  Economics  —  in  short,  all  mental  relations  are 
natural  and  scientific  relations,  that  it  together  with  the 
mechanical  materialists  and  the  German  idealists  still  re- 
mains in  the  metaphysical,  that  is  in  the  transcendental 
stage. 

It  is  not  what  one  thinks  of  the  stars  or  animals, 
plants  or  stones  that  distinguishes  materialists  from 
idealists ;  the  characteristic  point  is  solely  and  only  the 
respective  view  of  the  relation  between  body  and  mind. 

The  insight  into  the  total  perversity  of  German  ideal- 
ism which  would  not  desist  from  regarding  mind  as  a 
metaphysical  primus  creating  all  tangible,  visible,  audible 
and  other  phenomena,  led  necessarily  to  the  Socialist  Ma- 
terialism which  is  called  "  Socialist  "  because  it  was  the 
Socialists  Marx  and  Engels  who  first  enunciated  clearly 
and  distinctly  that  the  material,  that  is,  the  economic  con- 
ditions of  human  society  form  the  basis  from  which  the 
entire  superstructure  of  the  juridical  and  political  institu- 
tions as  well  as  the  religious,  philosophical  and  other 
modes  of  thought  are  at  each  historical  epoch  in  the  last 
instance  explained.  Instead  of  explaining,  as  hitherto, 
the  existence  of  man  out  of  his  consciousness,  it  is  now, 
on  the  contrary,  the  consciousness  which  is  to  be  ex- 
plained out  of  his  existence,  that  is,  from  the  economic 
position,  from  the  way  and  manner  of  bread-winning. 

The  Socialist  materialism  understands  by  matter  not 
only  the  ponderable  and  tangible,  but  the  whole  real  ex- 
istence. Everything  that  is  contained  in  the  Universe  — 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    30! 

and  in  it  is  contained  everything,  the  All  and  the  Uni- 
verse being  but  two  names  for  one  thing  —  everything 
this  Socialist  materialism  embraces  in  one  conception, 
one  name,  one  category,  whether  that  category  be  called 
the  actuality,  reality,  Nature  or  matter. 

We,  modern  Socialists,  are  not  of  the  narrow  opinion 
that  the  ponderable  and  tangible  matter  is  matter  par 
excellence.  We  hold  that  the  scent  of  flowers, 
sounds  and  smells  are  also  material.  We  do  not  con- 
ceive the  forces  as  mere  appendices,  mere  predicates  of 
matter,  and  matter,  the  tangible  one  as  "  the  thing " 
which  dominates  over  all  properties.  Our  conception 
of  matter  and  force  is,  so  to  speak,  democratic.  One  is 
of  the  same  value  as  the  other;  everything  individual  is 
but  the  property,  appendix,  predicate  or  attribute  of  the 
entire  Nature  as  a  whole.  The  brain  is  not  the  matador 
and  the  mental  functions  are  not  the  subordinate  servants. 
No,  we  modern  materialists  assert  that  the  function  is  as 
much  and  as  little  an  independent  thing  as  the  tangible 
brain-mass  or  any  other  materiality.  The  thoughts,  too, 
their  origin  and  nature,  are  just  as  real  matters  and  ma- 
terials worthy  of  study  as  any. 

We  are  materialists  because  we  do  not  make  of  mind  a 
metaphysical  monstrosity.  The  force  of  thinking  is  to 
us  just  as  little  a  "thing  in  itself"  as  gravity  or  a  clod. 
All  things  are  merely  links  of  the  great  universal  con- 
nection which  alone  is  durable,  true,  subsisting  and  thus 
more  than  a  phenomenon,  indeed,  the  only  "  thing  in 
itself  "  and  the  absolute  truth. 

Because  we  Socialist  materialists  have  only  one  inter- 
related conception  of  matter  and  mind,  the  so-called 
mental  relations  such  as  those  of  politics,  religion,  morals, 
etc.,  are  to  us  also  material  conditions ;  and  material  labor 
and  the  bread-and-butter  question  are  only  in  so  far 


3O2  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

regarded  by  us  as  the  basis,  the  perquisite  and  foundation 
of  all  mental  development  as  the  animal  element  is  prior 
in  point  of  time  to  the  human  one  —  which  does  not 
prevent  us  from  valuing  man  and  his  intellect  very 
highly. 

Socialist  materialism  is  distinguished  by  the  fact  that 
it  does  not  undervalue  the  human  mind  as  the  old  mate- 
rialists did,  nor  over-value  it  as  the  German  idealists  did. 
It  proceeds  in  its  appreciation  in  a  moderate  manner  and 
regards  both  Mechanics  and  Philosophy  from  the  stand- 
point of  critical  dialectics,  namely  as  interrelated  phe- 
nomena of  the  inseparable  world-process  and  world-prog- 
ress. 

In  his  "  General  Morphology  "  Ernst  Haeckel  says : 
"  The  general  and  rapid  advancement  made  by  Geology 
and  Botany  in  consequence  of  the  extraordinary  services 
rendered  by  Linnaeus  to  the  systematic  knowledge  of 
animals  and  plants,  led  to  the  erroneous  assumption  that 
the  systems  themselves  were  the  aim  of  science  and  that 
it  was  only  necessary  to  enrich  the  system  with  as  many 
new  forms  as  possible  in  order  to  render  durable  service 
to  the  cause  of  zoological  and  botanical  sciences.  It 
was  thus  that  there  arose  the  great  and  melancholy  host 
of  zoologists  of  the  Museum  and  botanists  of  the 
Herbarium  who  could  distinguish  by  their  names  each 
of  the  thousands  of  species,  but  at  the  same  time  had  not 
the  slightest  knowledge  of  the  rougher  and  more  delicate 
structural  conditions  of  these  species,  of  their  develop- 
ment and  life-history,  of  their  physiological  and  anatomi- 
cal conditions.  .  .  .  We  must,  however,  point  out  the 
singular  delusion  under  which  modern  Biology  labors 
when  it  advertises  in  glowing  terms  as  scientific  Zoology 
and  scientific  Botany  the  bare  mechanical  description  of 
the  inner  and  delicate,  especially  microscopical,  form-rela- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    303 

tions  and  compares  this,  not  without  pride,  with  the  pure 
description  of  the  external  and  rougher  form-relations, 
which  was  exclusively  prevalent  in  former  times  and 
which  is  the  chief  occupation  of  the  so-called  sys- 
tematizers.  As  long  as  these  two  schools,  which  are 
fond  of  contrasting  themselves  so  sharply,  are  aiming 
at  description  only  (whether  of  the  external  or  internal, 
the  delicate  or  the  rougher  forms,  does  not  matter)  the 
one  is  worth  just  as  much  as  the  other.  Both  of  them 
can  only  rise  to  the  level  of  science  when  they  try  to 
explain  the  form  and  trace  the  law  underlying  it. 
In  our  firm  conviction,  the  reaction  which  was  sooner 
or  later  bound  to  come  against  this  totally  one-sided  and 
narrow  empiricism,  has  in  fact  already  begun.  Darwin's 
discovery,  given  to  the  world  in  1859,  of  the  natural 
selection  in  the  struggle  for  existence  —  one  of  the  great- 
est discoveries  of  the  human  mind  —  has  with  one  stroke 
turned  such  a  fierce  and  clear  light  upon  the  obscure 
mass  of  the  gradually  accumulated  biological  facts  that 
even  the  most  obstinate  empiricists  —  if  they  wish  to  keep 
pace  with  science  at  all  —  will  in  future  no  longer  be  able 
to  avoid  the  new  Natural  Philosophy  which  arose  as  a 
consequence  of  it." 

We  quote  these  words  of  Haeckel,  one  of  the  most  re- 
nowned naturalists  of  the  time,  to  show  what  his  attitude 
is  to  the  old  question :  what  is  science  ?  What  must  we 
do  in  order  to  understand,  to  study,  to  explain  stones, 
plants,  animals,  men  and  human  instincts?  Man  pos- 
sesses in  his  head  an  active  faculty  which  is  engaged  in 
this  work  of  elucidation.  It  is  the  different  ideas,  opin- 
ions and  views  on  this  active  faculty  —  otherwise  called 
mind,  intellect,  reason,  faculty  of  cognition  —  which  di- 
vide the  old  and  new  Materialists  as  well  as  the  Idealists 
into  different  camps.  These  parties  all  differ  between  them 


304  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

as  to  the  mind  and  the  way  in  which  this  mind  arrives 
at  science  and  how  science  must  be  constituted. 

In  natural  science  there  is  comparatively  little  differ- 
ence of  opinion  on  this  subject,  yet,  as  we  have  just  heard 
from  Haeckel,  sufficient  to  arouse  a  lively  discussion  as 
to  what  is  science  and  what  is  not.  Classical,  however, 
the  controversy  becomes  only  in  the  so-called  "  phi- 
losophical "  branches  of  knowledge  which  deal  with  the 
doctrines  and  lives  of  the  teachers  of  religion,  of  states- 
men, politicians,  jurists,  sociologists,  economists,  etc., 
that  is,  with  the  most  vital  interests  of  human  society. 
It  is  there  that  one  is  first  to  perceive  to  the  full  extent 
the  import  which  attaches  to  what  one  thinks  of  the 
human  mind  and  of  the  influence  which  a  solid  method 
of  thinking,  or,  in  fact,  a  theory  of  it  has  for  human 
society. 

No  doubt,  natural  science  knows  how  to  use  the  hu- 
man mind, —  its  successes  are  proof  of  that.  But  these 
same  naturalists  are  also  sometimes  engaged  in  dis- 
cussing politics,  religion,  socialism,  etc.,  and  though  they 
know  how  to  use  their  brains  scientifically  in  their  own 
province,  this  habitual  use  is  not  sufficient  for  purposes 
of  solving  successfully  problems  which  arise  in  other  do- 
mains. We,  therefore,  believe  to  have  proved  by  this 
fact  that  we  are  justified  in  proceeding  with  our  inquiry 
into  the  nature  of  the  faculty  of  thinking  and  into  the 
proper  and  successful  mode  of  its  application. 

As  we  don't  agree  with  the  old  materialists  who 
thought  that  they  had  sufficiently  explained  the  intellect 
by  calling  it  the  property  of  the  brain,  we  cannot  hope 
for  a  solution  of  the  problem  by  subjecting  the  human 
mind  to  an  anatomical  dissection.  Nor  can  the  specu- 
lative way  which  expects  to  find  out  the  nature  of  the 
mind -by  rummaging  in  the  interior  of  the  head,  be  ours 


EXCURSIONS   INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY   305 

because  such  idealist  speculation  has  achieved  altogether 
too  little.  Thus  comes  opportunely  Haeckel  with  his 
opinion  about  the  proper  method  of  science.  He  con- 
templates the  human  mind,  and  how  it  worked  histori- 
cally, and  this  appears  to  us  to  be  the  right  method. 

Every  natural  product  behaves  with  a  peculiarity  of 
its  own;  the  stone  remains  stationary,  and  the  wind 
travels  from  land  to  land.  Nor  is  the  mind  a  thing  that 
can  be  got  hold  of  at  a  certain  place;  true,  we  feel  its 
activity  in  our  head,  but  it  does  not  remain  there ;  it  issues 
forth  into  the  wide  world  and  there  it  combines,  if  not 
chemically,  still  as  a  matter  of  fact  with  all  objects  of 
the  universal  Nature.  As  little  as  the  wind  can  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  air,  can  our  mind  be  separated  from  the 
other  natural  objects;  it  only  manifests  itself  as  a  phe- 
nomenon in  mental  combination  with  such  natural  things. 
Without  the  natural  combination  with  other  material  the 
mind  is  not  to  be  had.  It  is  probably  not  a  chemical 
element  which  can  be  produced  in  a  pure  state.  And 
why  should  everything  be  chemical? 

And  so  the  mind  knows  something  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals. Botany  and  Zoology  are  mental  combinations.  In 
natural  sciences  — generally  speaking,  in  everything  which 
we  know  positively  —  the  human  mind  is  naturally  com- 
bined with  the  respective  material  things  and  is  only 
to  be  conceived  and  represented  in  such  combinations. 

Now,  Haeckel  tells  us  of  the  melancholy  host  of  zoolo- 
gists of  the  Museum  and  botanists  of  the  Herbarium  and 
explains  that  the  method  in  which  they  combined  their 
mind  with  animals  and  plants  was  not  the  right  one. 
And  the  succeeding  scientists,  too,  who  studied  the  more 
delicate  and  inner  structures  microscopically,  but  still 
confined  themselves  to  mere  description  of  the  objects, 
did  not  know  how  to  bring  about  the  right  combination 


306  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

between  the  subject  and  the  object,  mind  and  matter. 
It  was  only  the  discovery  of  the  natural  selection 
through  the  struggle  for  existence,  given  to  the  world  by 
Darwin  in  1859,  which  was  a  proper  mental  combina- 
tion—  so  Haeckel  thinks,  and  we  take  the  liberty  to 
differ. 

Let  not  the  reader  misunderstand  us.  We  do  not 
dispute  that  Darwin  and  Haeckel  have  correctly  and  in  a 
scientific  way  combined  their  individual  minds  with  the 
vegetable  and  animal  kingdom  and  produced  clear  crys- 
tals of  knowledge.  We  merely  want  to  call  the  attention 
to  modern  dialectical  materialism  which  is  of  opinion 
that  Darwin  and  Haeckel,  however  high  their  merits  are, 
were  not  the  first  and  not  the  only  ones  who  produced 
such  crystals.  Even  the  melancholy  zoologists  of  the 
Museum  and  the  botanists  of  the  Herbarium  left  us  a 
good  slice  of  science.  The  arrangement  of  the  vegetable 
and  animal  kingdoms  in  classes,  species  and  varieties 
according  to  different  characters  was  a  fully  justified  sci- 
entific combination  of  mind  and  matter,  "  bare  descrip- 
tion" though  it  was.  Without  thoughts  it  could  not 
have  been  done.  Certainly  Darwin  has  done  more;  but 
still  nothing  but  more.  He  added  to  the  old  a  new 
light,  but  his  light  was  by  no  means  a  different  light  from 
that  of  Linnaeus.  Darwin  uses  the  "  many  accumulated 
biological  facts  "  and  adds  some  new  ones ;  he  describes 
Embryology  and  how  by  means  of  natural  selection  the 
changes  are  inherited  and  how  these  inherited  changes 
by  means  of  the  struggle  for  existence  become  stronger, 
and  so  intermediate  forms  and  new  varieties  arise.  By 
means  of  observation  and  accumulation  of  facts  and  their 
description  a  new  light  is  gained  or,  rather,  the  light 
gained  previously  is  increased.  The  service  rendered  by 
Darwin  is  great,  but  not  so  overwhelming  as  to  justify 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    307 

Haeckel  in  making  this  "  science  "  something  higher  than 
the  everyday  combination  of  the  human  mind  with  the 
objective  facts. 

We  have  already  pointed  out  in  our  first  article  that 
the  narrow  materialism  not  only  considers  mind  a  prop- 
erty of  the  brain  —  a  proposition  which  nobody  dis- 
putes—  but  infers  from  that  directly  or  indirectly  that 
the.  faculty  of  reasoning  or  of  knowledge  predicated  'A 
the  brain  was  not  a  substantive  object  of  study,  so  that  the 
study  of  the  material  brain  yielded  sufficient  informa- 
tion of  the  mental  property  and  force.  As  against  this, 
our  dialectic  materialism  proves  that  the  question  ought 
to  be  considered  after  the  precept  of  Spinoza  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Universe,  sub  specie  aternitatis.  In 
the  endless  Universe  matter  in  the  ^nse  of  the  old  and 
antiquated  materialists,  that  is,  of  tangible  matter,  does 
not  possess  the  slightest  preferential  right  to  be  more 
substantial,  i.  e.,  more  immediate,  more  distinct  and  more 
certain  than  any  other  phenomenon  of  Nature. 

It  is  an  essential  broadening  of  our  sphere  of  knowl- 
edge to  conceive  Che  material  subject,  the  brain,  together 
with  its  mental  predicate,  that  is,  both  the  brain  and  the 
mind,  as  nere  properties  or  phenomena  or  changes  of  the 
absolve  subject,  the  natural  Nature  which  has  no  other 
nature  besides,  or  above  or  outside.  This  conception  re- 
strains the  extravagance  with  which  materialists  extoll 
their  matter,  and  idealists  their  function  of  the  brain  to 
the  skies. 

Those  materialists  who  make  tangible  matter  the  sub- 
stance and  the  intangible  function  of  the  brain  a  mere 
incidence  think  too  little  of  this  function.  In  order  to 
gain  a  more  adequate  and  just  idea  of  it,  it  is  above  all 
necessary  to  go  back  to  the  fact  that  they  are  children 
of  one  mother,  that  they  are  two  natural  phenomena  on 


308  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

which  we  turn  a  light  when  we  describe  them  and  arrange 
them  in  classes,  species  and  sub-species 

When  we  declare  as  regards  matter  —  and  nobody  will 
dispute  it  —  that  it  is  a  phenomenon  of  Nature  and  state 
the  same  with  regard  to  the  mental  faculty  of  man,  then, 
of  course,  we  still  know  very  little  of  them.  Yet  so 
much  we  do  know  that  they  are  twin-children,  that  no- 
body must  separate  them  to  any  extravagant  extent,  that 
nobody  must  draw  between  them  a  distinction  toto  genere, 
toto  coelo. 

If  we  wish  now,  for  instance,  to  know  something  more 
of  matter,  then  we  must  do  as  the  zoologists  of  the  Mu- 
seum and  the  botanists  of  the  Herbarium  did  once  upon 
a  time, —  we  must  try  to  ascertain,  to  study  and  to  de- 
scribe its  different  classes,  families  and  varieties,  how 
they  rise,  pass  away  and  change  into  one  another.  This 
is  the  science  of  matter.  Whoever  wishes  for  more 
wishes  something  transcendental,  and  does  not  under- 
stand what  knowledge  means,  does  not  understand  either 
the  organ  of  knowledge  or  its  use.  When  the  old  ma- 
terialists deal  with  special  matters,  they  behave  quite 
scientifically;  but  when  they  have  to  deal  with  abstract 
matter,  with  its  general  conception,  then  their  helpless- 
ness in  the  science  of  knowledge  stands  revealed.  It  is 
precisely  the  merit  of  the  idealists  that  they  at  least  have 
advanced  the  use  of  abstractions  and  general  ideas  to  an 
extent  which  enabled  modern  socialist  materialism  to 
recognize  at  last,  that  matter  and  conception  are  ordinary 
products  of  Nature  and  that  there  is  not  and  cannot  be 
anything  which  does  not  wholly  belong  to  the  one  and 
only  absolute  category  of  the  natural  world. 

Our  materialism  is  distinguished  by  its  special  knowl- 
edge of  the  common  nature  of  mind  and  matter. 
Wherever  this  modern  materialism  takes  up  the  human 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN  OF  EP1STEMOLOGY   309 

mind  as  an  object  of  study,  it  treats  it  like  any  other 
object  of  study,  consequently  like  the  zoologists  of  the 
Museum,  the  botanists  of  the  Herbarium  and  the  Dar- 
winists treat  the  knowledge  and  description  of  their  ob- 
jects. Unquestionably,  the  former  have  by  their  classi- 
fication thrown  a  light  upon  the  thousands  of  their  ob- 
jects. Perhaps  that  light  was  not  a  very  strong  light  and 
Darwin  strengthened  it  in  a  way  which  made  the  addi- 
tional light  outshine  the  original  one.  Yet,  the  old 
"  describers  "  had  to  "  know  "  before  they  could  classify, 
and  Darwin's  knowledge  itself  was  nothing  but  a  de- 
scription guided  by  the  conception  of  evolution  and 
yielding,  by  a  description  of  the  natural  proceedings,  a 
more  adequate  picture  of  the  accumulated  facts. 

With  all  that,  the  old  zoologists  and  botanists  were 
narrow-minded  interpreters  :  they  interpreted  the  varieties 
of  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms  merely  as  regards 
their  contiguity,  and  failed  to  see  their  evolutionary 
process.  To  have  drawn  within  the  limits  of  his  ob- 
servation the  historical  transformation  constitutes  in  the 
main  the  merit  of  Darwin.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  the 
fact  that  it  was  Darwin's  science  which  first  illuminated 
the  results  gained  by  the  zoologists  of  the  Museum. 
Still,  the  same  will  also  happen  to  modern  natural  sci- 
ence :  future  discoveries  will  enlarge  those  already  made, 
will  consequently  make  them  always  more  and  more  valu- 
able. Nothing  and  nobody  can  pose  as  the  only  true 
solution,  but  everything  is  to  be  considered  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Universe. 

The  materialist  theory  of  knowledge  amounts,  then,  to 
this  statement,  that  the  human  organ  of  cognition  radi- 
ates no  metaphysical  light,  but  is  a  piece  of  Nature 
which  pictures  other  pieces  of  Nature  whose  essence 
is  explained  when  we  describe  it  and  bring  it  in  connec- 


3IO  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

tion  with  the  whole  Universe  as  the  one  Reality  and  the 
real  Unity.  Such  a  description  demands  from  the 
epistemologist  or  philosopher  that  he  should  treat  his 
subject  in  the  same  precise  way  as  the  animal  world  is 
treated  by  the  zoologist.  Should  I  be  reproached  with 
not  following  this  precept  immediately,  I  would  point 
to  Rome  which,  too,  was  not  built  in  one  day. 

It  is  remarkable  how  those  enlightened  naturalists, 
who  know  so  well  that  the  eternal  movement  of  Nature 
has  through  adaptation,  selection,  struggle  for  existence, 
etc.,  produced  elephants  and  apes  out  of  protoplasma  and 
molluscs,  should  be  reluctant  to  acknowledge  that  mind 
has  developed  in  the  same  way.  Why  should  not  reason 
be  able  to  accomplish  what  bone  did?  But  true,  bones 
did  not  do  it,  and  reason  cannot  do  it.  It  is  the  substan- 
tial force  of  the  Universe,  in  which  they  participate,  which 
has  brought  about  the  things  that  are,  and  all  that  the 
human  mind  can  do  is  to  form  a  picture  of  its  gradual, 
consistent  and  rational  working.  Why  does  it  wish  foi- 
more?  It  only  wishes  for  more  because  and  in  so  far  as 
it  is  too  exacting  and  extravagant  a  taskmaster. 

When  we  say  not  only  of  reason,  but  also  of  Nature 
in  general  that  it  is  rational,  we  do  not  wish  to  convey 
the  idea  that  this  rational  Nature  and  its  working  are 
the  predetermined  and  purposeful  work  of  a  fantastic 
mind.  Nature,  which  could  develop  the  human  reason,  is 
such  an  astounding  thing  that  it  requires  no  central  organ 
for  its  rational  development.  Wonderful  Nature  is  not 
robbed  of  its  wonderfulness  by  our  "  knowledge,"  "  cog- 
nition," "  interpretation  " ;  it  may,  however,  by  a  closer 
description  or  an  adequate  picture,  well  be  freed  from  all 
transcendentalism,  from  all  mystification, —  nay,  inter- 
preted and  grasped,  in  so  far  as  on(  does  not  form  ar 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    3!  I 

exaggerated  idea  of  those  mental  functions,  but  gains  a 
true  conception  thereof. 

Just  as  the  zoologist  of  the  Museum  got  to  know  his 
animals  by  description  of  the  class,  species  and  family 
in  which  they  have  been  arranged,  so  is  also  the  human 
mind  to  be  studied  through  finding  the  different  varieties 
of  the  mind.  Every  person  has  an  intellect  of  his  own 
which  together  with  those  of  all  others  must  be  con- 
sidered as  blossoms  of  the  general  mind.  This  general 
human  mind  has,  like  the  individual  one,  its  develop- 
ment partly  behind,  partly  before  it;  it  has  had  and  will 
have  to  undergo  different  and  manifold  metamorphoses, 
and  if  we  follow  those  back  to  the  beginning  of  mankind 
we  arrive  at  a  stage  where  the  divine  spark  manifests 
itself  but  dimly  in  bestiality.  The  bestialized  human 
mind  forms  there  the  bridge  to  the  animal  mind  proper, 
then  to  the  mind  of  plants,  to  the  spirits  of  the  wood 
and  mountains.  In  other  words :  in  this  manner  we  ar- 
rive at  the  understanding  that  between  mind  and  matter 
as  well  as  between  all  parts  of  the  universal  unity  of 
Nature  there  are  but  gradual  and  hardly  perceptible 
transition-stages,  but  no  metaphysical  differences. 

It  is  because  the  old  materialism  did  not  understand 
this  fact;  because  it  was  unable  to  conceive  the  ideas 
of  matter  and  mind  as  but  abstract  pictures  of  concrete 
phenomena ;  because  in  spite  of  its  religious  free-thought, 
in  spite  of  its  disparagement  of  the  divine  mind,  it  did 
not  know  what  to  do  with  the  natural  mind  and  was  on 
account  of  such  ignorance  unable  to  overcome  meta- 
physics,—  it  is  because  of  all  that  that  Engels  called  this 
materialism  metaphysical,  and  the  materialism  of  Social- 
Democracy,  which  has  received  a  better  schooling  through 
the  preceding  German  idealism,  the  dialectical. 

In  the  eyes  of  this  latter  kind  of  materialism  the  mind 


312  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

is  a  collective  name  for  the  mental  phenomen*,  as  matter 
is  a  collective  name  for  the  material  phenomena,  an«,  the 
two  together  figure  under  the  idea  and  name  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature.  This  is  a  new  epistemological  mode 
of  thinking  which  applies  to  all  special  sciences,  to  all 
special  thoughts,  and  puts  forward  the  principle  that  all 
things  in  the  world  are  to  be  considered  sub  specie  ceter- 
nitatis,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Universe.  This  eter- 
nal Universe  is  so  combined  with  its  temporal  phenomena 
that  all  eternity  is  temporal,  all  temporality  is  eternal. 

The  substantiated  mode  of  thinking  of  Social-De- 
mocracy throws  thereby  a  new  light  upon  the  old  prob- 
lem with  which  idealism  was  afflicted,  namely,  how  can 
we  think  truly,  how  is  the  subjective  thought  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  objective?  The  answer  is:  thou 
shalt  not  distinguish  transcendentally ;  even  the  most  exact 
representation,  even  the  truest  thought  can  only  give  you 
a  picture  of  the  universal  varieties  which  exist  within 
and  outside  you.  It  is  not  at  all  so  difficult  to  distinguish 
realistic  pictures  from  the  fantastical,  and  every  artist 
can  do  it  with  the  utmost  precision.  The  fantastical 
ideas  are  borrowed  from  reality,  and  the  most  exact  ideav, 
of  reality  are  necessarily  animated  by  a  breath  of  fan^ 
tasy.  Exact  representation  and  ideas  render  us  excellent 
services  precisely  because  they  do  not  possess  an  idep.l 
exactness,  but  only  a  moderate  one. 

Our  thoughts  cannot  and  must  not  agree  with  thei.' 
objects  in  an  exaggerated,  metaphysical  sense  of  the 
word.  What  we  desire  and  may  and  should  desire,  is  to 
gain  an  approximate  idea  of  reality.  Hence,  also  reality 
can  only  approach  our  ideals.  There  can  be,  outside  th<. 
idea,  no  mathematical  point,  no  mathematical  straight 
line.  In  reality  all  straight  lines  contain  an  admixture 
of  crookedness,  just  as  even  the  highest  justice  must  stilf 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    313 

contain  a  grain  of  injustice.  Truth  is  of  a  substantial 
nature  and  not  of  an  ideal  one;  it  is  materialistic;  it  is 
not  to  be  conceived  through  thoughts  alone,  but  also 
through  the  eyes,  ears  and  hands ;  it  is  not  a  product  of 
thought,  but  on  the  contrary,  the  thought  is  a  product  of 
universal  life.  The  living  Universe  is  incarnate  truth.  [ 


IV. 

DARWIN   AX'")  HEGEL. 

It  is  well  1,-itown  that  prilosophers  have  often  thrown 
out  ideas  far  MI  advance  of  cheir  time  which  subsequently 
found  their  verification  iii  the  exact  sciences.  Thus,  for 
instance,  Descartes  is  well  known  to  physicists,  Leibnitz 
to  mathematicians,  Kant  to  physical  geographers.  It  may 
be  generally  slid  that  philosophers  enjoy  the  reputation 
of  having  influenced  by  their  ingenious  anticipations  the 
progress  of  science.  We  wish  to  point  out  thereby  that 
philosophy  and  natural  science  do  not  at  all  lie  inordi- 
nately far  apart.  It  is  the  same  human  mind  which  works 
in  the  one  as  in  the  other  science  by  the  same  method. 
The  method  of  natural  science  is  more  exact,  but  only 
gradually  so,  not  substantially.  There  is  in  every  sort 
of  knowledge,  even  in  natural  science,  a  certain  amount 
of  obscure,  mysterious  "matter,"  a  matter  of  cognition, 
alongside  the  luminous  and  palpable  one  and  even  the 
most  ingenious  anticipations  of  our  philosophers  are,  in 
spite,  or  rather  because  of,  their  mysterious  nature,  still 
"  natural."  To  have  worked  with  success  at  a  certain 
conciliation  between  the  natural  and  the  mental  is  the 
common  merit  of  Darwin  and  Hegel. 

We  wish  to  render  the  now  almost  forgotten  Hegel 
what  is  to  due  to  him  as  the  forerunner  of  Darwin. 
Mendelssohn,  in  a  dispute  with  Lessing,  called  Spinoza 
a  "  dead  dog."  Just  as  dead  appears  now  Hegel,  who  in 
his  time,  in  the  words  of  his  biographer  Haym,  achieved 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EP1STEMOLOGY    31$ 

in  the  world  of  letters  a  position  analogous  to  that  of 
Napoleon  I.  in  the  political.  Spinoza  has  long  since  un- 
dergone resurrection  from  the  state  of  a  "  dead  dog," 
and  so  will  Hegel,  too,  find  his  merits  acknowledged  by 
future  generations.  If  he  has  lost  his  influence  at  the 
present  time,  it  is  merely  a  temporary  eclipse 

Hegel,  it  is  known,  once  said  that  of  his  numerous 
disciples  only  one  understood  him  and  that  one,  too, 
misunderstood  him.  That  such  a  general  misunderstand- 
ing is  more  to  be  ascribed  to  the  obscurity  of  the  master 
than  to  the  lack  of  understanding  in  the  disciples,  admits, 
of  course,  of  no  question.  Hegel  cannot  be  thoroughly 
understood  because  he  did  not  understand  himself  thor- 
oughly. With  all  that  he  is  an  ingenious  anticipator  of 
Darwin's  theory  of  evolution,  and  with  equal  justice  and 
truth  one  may  say  the  reverse:  Darwin  is  an  ingenious 
interpreter  of  Hegel's  theory  of  knowledge.  The  latter 
is  a  doctrine  of  evolution  which  embraces  not  only  the 
origin  of  species  of  the  entire  animal  world,  but  also  the 
origin  and  development  of  all  things.  It  is  altogether  a 
cosmical  theory  of  evolution.  We  have  as  little  right 
to  blame  Hegel  for  his  obscurity  as  Darwin  for  not  hav- 
ing exhausted  all  knowledge  with  regard  to  the  origin 
of  species. 

Truly  and  surely  who  explains  everything,  explains 
nothing.  From  such  fantastical  desire  the  great  philoso- 
pher was  quite  free,  though  his  school  was  ready  enough 
to  worship  him.  Many  Hegelians  really  believed  in  their 
time  that  the  master  could  furnish  them  the  absolute 
knowledge,  and  that  it  was  only  necessary  to  open  one's 
mouth  and  swallow  it.  Still  we  also  had  such  disciples 
who  proceeded  with  earnest  labors  on  the  inherited  soil 
and  brought  forth  glorious  fruit  on  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge. 


316  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Let  us  be  critical  towards  God  and  all  men,  Hegel  and 
Darwin  included.  Darwin's  theory  of  evolution  has  its 
indestructible  merits.  Who  will  deny  it?  Still  a  Ger- 
man, who  has  been  brought  up  under  the  influence  of  his 
great  philosophers,  must  not  forget  that  the  great  Dar- 
win was  much  smaller  than  his  doctrine.  How  anxiously 
careful  is  he,  not  to  draw  the  necessary  conclusions !  No 
one  can  overvalue  the  worth  of  exact  research ;  but  who- 
ever does  not  perceive  that  it  must  be  accompanied,  if 
not  by  a  flight  into  the  Endless,  at  least  by  an  endless 
flight,  by  a  continuous  soaring,  does  not  understand  the 
full  value  of  exact  experimental  inquiry. 

The  theory  of  evolution  which  we  will  not  say  was 
solved,  but  was  considerably  stimulated  and  advanced  by 
•Hegel,  received  before  all  at  the  hands  of  Darwin  an 
exceedingly  valuable  application  or  specification  in  relation 
to  zoology.  Still  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
the  specification  was  of  no  greater  value  than  the  gereral- 
ization  in  which  Hegel  excels;  the  one  cannot  and  must 
not  be  without  the  other.  The  naturalist  combines  the 
two,  and  no  philosopher  who  deserves  the  name  will  fail 
do  so,  either ;  it  is  only  the  more  or  the  less  which  is  char- 
acteristic for  the  two  branches  of  knowledge.  True,  the 
necessity  of  specialization  would  sometimes  be  forgotten 
by  the  best  philosophers;  it  may  not  even  come  to  their 
consciousness  in  any  clear  form  at  all.  But  just  as  often 
would  exact  science  forget  the  general  aspect  of  its  work, 
while  it  was  not  the  worst  investigators  in  the  scientific 
domain  who  sometimes  ventured  on  too  bold  a  flight  to 
the  skies.  The  sporadic  cloud-soaring  of  natural  science 
and  the  exact  anticipations  of  philosophers  should  prove 
to  the  reader  that  the  General  and  the  Special  harmonize 
together. 

All  art  is  natural  art, —  despite  the  usual  opinion  which 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN  OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    317 

places  Nature  and  Art  at  an  over  great  distance  from  each 
other;  and  likewise  all  science,  philosophy  included,  is 
science  of  Nature.  Speculative  philosophy,  too,  has  its 
exact  object,  namely,  "  the  problem  of  cognition."  It 
would,  however,  be  rendering  the  philosophers  too  much 
credit  if  we  were  to  say  that  they  have  solved  their 
problem.  Other  branches  of  knowledge,  especially  those 
of  natural  science,  have  cooperated;  for  science  of  all 
branches,  of  all  nations  and  of  all  the  times  is  the  general 
result  of  a  closely  connected  cooperation.  The  philoso- 
phers have  assisted  the  naturalists,  natural  science  has 
helped  philosophy  until  the  problem  of  knowledge  is  now 
developed,  revealed  and  clearly  worked  out. 

There  is  no  question  as  to  what  ought  to  be  the  name 
of  the  subject-matter  which  is  studied  by  the  physician 
or  astronomer,  whilst  the  subject-matter  of  philosophy 
was  at  first  much  disputed  so  that  one  might  say  that 
the  philosophers  did  not  know  what  they  wanted.  Now 
at  last,  after  thousands  of  years  of  incessant  philosophic 
development,  it  came  to  be  recognized  that  the  "  Problem 
of  Cognition  "  or  "  Theory  of  Science "  has  been  the 
object  and  the  result  of  philosophic  work. 

In  order  to  understand  clearly  the  relation  between 
Hegel  and  Darwin  we  are  bound  to  touch  upon  the  deep- 
est and  most  obscure  questions  of  science.  The  subject- 
matter  of  philosophy  is  just  one  of  those.  Darwin's 
subject-matter  is  undoubted.  He  knew  his  object;  yet 
it  is  to  be  observed  that  Darwin  who  knew  his  object 
wanted  to  investigate  it, —  consequently  did  not  know  it 
through  and  through.  Darwin  investigated  his  object, 
"  the  Origin  of  Species,"  but  he  did  not  exhaust  it.  This 
means  that  the  subject-matter  of  every  science  is  endless. 
Whether  one  wants  to  measure  the  Infinite  or  merely 
the  smallest  atom,  one  always  has  to  deal  with  the  Im- 


3l8  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

measurable.  Nature,  both  as  a  whole  and  in  its  parts, 
is  inexhaustible,  not  knowable  to  its  last  particle, —  con- 
sequently without  beginning  and  end. 

The  recognition  of  this  every-day  Infinitude  is  the 
result  of  science,  although  the  latter  started  from  a  trans- 
cendental religious  or  metaphysical  Infinitude. 

Darwin's  subject-matter  is  just  as  endless  and  un- 
knowable to  the  very  last  particle  as  Hegel's.  The  one 
inquired  into  the  origin  of  species,  the  other  into  the 
process  of  human  thinking.  The  result  in  both  cases  was 
the  doctrine  of  evolution. 

We  have  to  deal  here  with  two  very  great  men  and 
with  a  very  great  thing.  We  try  to  show  that  these 
men  did  not  work  in  opposition  to  each  other,  but  in  the 
same  direction,  on  the  same  line.  They  have  raised  the 
monistic  conception  of  the  world  to  a  height  and  strength- 
ened it  with  positive  discoveries  that  up  till  then  were 
unknown. 

Darwin's  doctrine  of  evolution  is  confined  to  the  animal 
species,  and  removes  the  rigid  lines  which  the  religious 
conception  of  the  world  sets  up  between  the  classes  and 
species  of  living  creatures.  Darwin  emancipates  science 
from  the  religious  class  conception  and  ejects  divine  crea- 
tion from  science  in  respect  to  this  special  'point.  In  this 
point  he  puts  in  the  place  of  the  transcendental  creation 
the  matter-of-fact  self-development.  To  prove  that  Dar- 
win did  not  fall  from  the  clouds  it  is  but  necessary  to 
remember  Lamarck  who  disputes  with  Darwin  the  honor 
of  priority.  This,  however  does  not  diminish  the  service 
rendered  to  science  by  Darwin ;  whilst  Lamarck  can  lay 
claim  to  the  philosophical  anticipation,  Darwin  can  claim 
the  specified  proofs. 

To  our  Hegel  belongs  the  honor  of  having  placed  the 
self-development  of  Nature  on  the  broadest  basis,  of 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OI    SPISTEMOLOGY    3IQ 

having  emancipated  knowledge  from  the  class-view  in 
the  most  general  way.  Darwin  criticises  the  traditional 
class-view  zoologically,  and  Hegel  universally. 

Science  make?  its  way  out  of  the  darkness  to  light. 
Philosophy,  too,  which  aims  at  the  illumination  of  the 
process  of  human  thinking,  made  its  way  upwards;  that 
it  pursued  its  object  rather  instinctively  than  otherwise 
became  by  the  time  of  Hegel  tolerably  patent  to  it. 

The  main  works  of  philosophy  move  about  the  "  meth- 
od," the  critical  use  of  reason,  the  doctrine  of  science  or 
of  truth,  the  way  and  manner  in  which  man  thinks,  in 
which  he  should  use  his  head.  It  was  the  aim  of  phi- 
losophy to  inform  itself  of  the  special  piece  of  the  universe 
which  serves  as  an  instrument  of  the  illumination  of  the 
universe. 

We  draw  special  attention  to  the  dualism,  to  the  double 
problem  in  this  endeavor:  the  Universe  was  to  be  illu- 
minated and  at  the  same  time  the  lamp,  by  means  of 
which  it  was  to  be  illuminated.  It  is  preeminently  this 
double  problem  which  confuses  the  work  of  philosophy. 
Science  starts  from  the  desire  of  illumination  and  does 
not  know  at  first  what  to  take  hold  of,  whether  the  Cos- 
mos as  a  whole,  or  gradually  and  piecemeal.  Many  a 
time  it  had  already  entered  the  practical  road  without 
having  arrived  at  any  guiding  principle.  In  the  time  of 
Hegel  the  problem  was  as  yet  to  a  large  extent  obscure, 
still  the  way  had  been  considerably  cleared.  It  was  Kant 
who  desisted  from  the  direct  search  after  the  whole  wis- 
dom of  the  world  and  took  up,  at  first,  specially  the  piece 
of  the  Universe  called  thinking.  This  piece,  according  to 
tradition,  belonged  preeminently  to  the  metaphysical  class 
of  the  transcendental  things.  Kant  by  his  critique  has 
done  enough  to  emancipate  the  intellect  from  this  sinister 
class-character.  Had  he  succeeded  in  this  completely, 


320  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

had  he  proved  to  us  entirely  that  Reason  is  a  thing  which 
together  with  other  things  belongs  to  the  same  natural 
series,  he  would  have,  like  Darwin,  delivered  a  crushing 
blow  against  the  transcendental  way  of  classification  as 
well  as  against  Religion.  No  doubt,  Kant  has  done  so, 
but  he  did  not  cleanly  cut  off  the  ear  of  Malchus  and  left 
therefore  still  some  work  to  his  successors. 

Hegel  was  an  excellent  successor  to  Kant.  When  we 
place  those  two  side  by  side,  the  one  illustrates  the  other, 
and  the  two  illustrate  Darwin.  Kant  chose  Reason  as 
his  special  object  of  study.  In  dealing  with  it  he  could 
not  help  drawing  other  things  within  his  circle  of  re- 
search. He  studies  Reason  as  it  behaves  in  the  active 
pursuit  of  other  sciences;  he  studies  it  in  its  relation  to 
the  rest  of  the  world  and  tells  us  a  hundred  times  that  it 
is  limited  to  experience,  to  one  indivisible  world  which  is 
temporal  and  at  the  same  time  eternal.  Hence  it  ought 
to  be  clear  to  the  reader  that  in  the  teaching  of  Kant 
general  knowledge  of  the  world  and  special  critique  of 
Reason  are  united. 

It  is  clear  at  a  glance  that  Kant's  discovery  of  the 
limitation  of  human  Reason  by  experience  was  both  phil- 
osophic science  and  scientific  philosophy.  The  same 
holds  good  of  Darwin's  doctrine  of  the  "  Origin  of  Spe- 
cies." He  proves  on  that  point  scientifically  that  the 
world  develops  in  itself  and  not  from  the  heavens  above 
—  "  transcendentally  "  as  the  philosophers  say.  Darwin 
is  a  philosopher,  though  he  makes  no  claim  to  that.  To 
have  worked  for  the  monistic  conception,  both  by  his 
special  demonstrations  and  general  conclusion,  he  has  in 
common  with  Kant  and  Hegel. 

Hegel  teaches  the  theory  of  evolution ;  he  teaches  that 
the  world  was  not  made,  is  not  a  creation,  has  not  an 
invariable  and  fixed  existence,  but  is  always  in  the  mak- 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    321 

ing  by  its  inherent  force.  Just  as  with  Darwin  the  classes 
of  animals  are  not  divided  by  unbridgeable  gulfs  from 
each  other,  but  on  the  contrary,  are  linked  with  each 
other,  so  with  Hegel  all  categories  and  forms  of  the 
world,  nothing  and  something,  being  and  becoming,  quan- 
tky  and  quality,  consciousness  and  unconsciousness, 
progress  and  inertia  —  all  inavoidably  flow  into  each 
other.  He  teaches  that  there  are  differences  everywhere, 
but  nowhere  — "  exaggerated,"  metaphysical,  transcend- 
ental differences.  According  to  Hegel  there  are  no 
such  things  which  differ  from  each  other  "  essentially." 
The  difference  between  essential  and  non-essential  is 
only  to  be  understood  as  relative  and  gradual.  There 
is  only  one  absolute  thing,  and  that  is  Cosmos,  and 
everything  which  hangs  about  it  are  fluid,  transient, 
changeable  forms,  accidentals  or  properties  of  the  general 
being  which  in  Hegel's  terminology  bears  the  name  of 
the  Absolute. 

Nobody  will  think  of  asserting  that  the  philosopher 
has  accomplished  his  work  in  the  most  lucid  and  com- 
plete manner.  His  teaching  made  further  development 
as  little  superfluous  as  that  of  Darwin,  but  it  gave  an 
impetus  to  the  entire  science  and  the  entire  human  life, — 
an  impetus  of  the  highest  importance.  Hegel  has  antici- 
pated Darwin,  but  Darwin  unfortunately  did  not  know 
Hegel.  This  "  unfortunately  "  is  not  a  reproach  to  the 
great  naturalist,  but  merely  a  suggestion  to  us  that  we 
should  supplement  the  work  of  the  specialist  Darwin  by 
the  work  of  the  great  generalizer  Hegel  and  proceed  still 
further  to  greater  clearness. 

We  have  stated  that  Hegel's  philosophy  was  so  obscure 
that  the  master  could  say  of  his  best  disciple  that  he 
misunderstood  him.  It  was  with  the  view  to  illuminating 
this  obscurity  that  not  only  the  succeeding  philosopher 


322  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Feuerbach  and  other  Hegelians  have  worked,  but  also 
the  entire  scientific,  political  and  economic  development 
of  the  world.  When  we  consider  Darwin's  discoveries, 
and  the  latest  theory  of  the  transformation  of  energy, 
it  must  at  last  become  clear  to  us  —  what  occupied  the 
best  minds  during  three  thousand  years  of  civilized  life  — 
that  the  world  is  not  made  up  of  fixed  classes,  but  is  a 
fluid  unity,  the  Absolute  incarnate,  which  develops  eter- 
nally and  is  only  classified  by  the  human  mind  for  pur- 
poses of  forming  intelligent  conceptions. 


Ernst  Haeckel,  the  well-known  naturalist  and  disciple 
of  Darwin,  says  in  his  preface  to  a  paper  read  by  him 
at  Eisenach  on  September  18,  1882,  and  published  after- 
wards at  Jena,  "  that  the  present  attitude  of  Virchow 
towards  Darwinism  is  entirely  different  from  that  which 
he  assumed  at  Munich  five  years  previously.  In  rising 
at  the  above  mentioned  Congress  of  Anthropologists  im- 
mediately after  Dr.  Lucse  he  (Virchow)  not  only  turned 
against  this  latter's  assertions  and  paid  Darwin  the  mer- 
ited amount  of  his  high  admiration,  but  he  expressly 
acknowledged  that  his  more  important  propositions  are 
logical  postulates,  irresistible  demands  of  our  reason. 
'  Yes,'  said  Virchow,  '  I  do  not  for  a  moment  deny  that 
the  generatio  ozquivoca  is  a  sort  of  general  demand  of  the 
human  mind.  .  .  .  Also  the  idea  that  man  has 
evolved  through  a  slow  and  gradual  development  from 
the  ranks  of  lower  animals,  is  a  logical  postulate.' ''' 

The  enlightened  knowledge  of  Nature,  proceeds  then 
Haeckel  in  his  speech,  "  recognizes  only  that  natural  rev- 
elation which  is  open  to  everyone  in  the  book  of  Nature 
and  can  be  learned  by  every  one  who  is  free  from  pre- 
conceived notions  and  is  endowed  with  healthy  senses 


EXCURSIONS   WTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    323 

and  a  hea!thy  mind.  From  the  study  of  that  book  we 
gain  that  monistic  and  purest  form  of  belief  which 
amounts  to  a  conviction  in  the  unity  of  God  and  Nature 
and  which  found  long  since  its  complete  expression  in 
the  pantheistic  professions  of  our  greatest  poets  and 
thinkers." 

That  our  greatest  poets  and  thinkers  exhibit  the  ten- 
dency to  a  monistic  and  pure  form  of  belief  and  strive 
after  a  physical  view  of  Nature  which  makes  all  meta- 
physics impossible  and  excludes  from  the  scientific  worH 
the  supernatural  God  together  with  the  miracle-rub- 
bish, —  that  is  quite  true.  But  when  Haeckd  gets  carried 
away  by  his  feelings  so  as  to  declare  that  the  tendency 
"  has  long  since  found  its  most  complete  expression,"  then 
he  is  laboring  under  a  very  grave  delusion,-— a  delusion 
as  regards  even  himself  and  his  own  profession  of  faith. 
Haeckel,  too,  does  not  know  yet  ho"f  to  think  monistic  ally. 

We  shall  presently  justify  our  reproach;  but  it  may 
be  stated  at  once  that  it  affects  not  only  Haeckel,  but  the 
entire  school  of  our  modern  natural  science,  because  it 
has  neglected  the  results  of  two  and  a  half  thousand 
years  of  philosophic  research,  which  has  back  of  it  a  long 
empirical  history  not  less  so  than  experimental  science 
itself. 

The  above  mentioned  lecture  by  Haeckel  contains  the 
following  passage :  "  We  should  like  to  emphasize  es- 
pecially the  conciliating  and  soothing  effect  of  our  genetic 
view  of  Nature, —  this  the  more  so  as  our  opponents  are 
continually  engaged  in  trying  to  ascribe  to  :t  destructive 
and  dissolving  tendencies.  The  latter  are  supposed  to 
work  not  only  against  science,  but  against  religion  also 
and  in  so  far  against  the  most  important  foundation  of 
our  civilized  life  in  general.  Such  srrious  charges,  in 
so  far  A*  they  really  Hi'*1  ^>a.J«.d  »ti  conviction  and  not 


324  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

merely  on  sophistical  syllogisms  can  only  be  explained 
by  a  lamentable  lack  of  knowledge  of  what  constitutes 
the  real  essence  of  true  religion.  This  essence  is  not 
based  on  a  special  form  of  faith,  of  domination,  but 
rather  on  the  critically  sound  conviction  of  the  ultimate 
unknowable  and  common  cause  of  all  things.  In  this 
acknowledgment  that  the  ultimate  cause  of  all  phenomena 
is  with  the  present  organization  of  our  brain  unknowable, 
critical  natural  philosophy  meets  with  dogmatic  re- 
ligion." 

There  are  three  points  in  this  confession  of  Haeckel 
which  should  be  kept  separately  and  prove  to  us  that  the 
"  monistic  view  of  the  world  "  has  even  in  its  most  radi- 
cal and  scientific  representative  not  found  as  yet  its  com- 
plete expression. 

1.  Haeckel  wants  to  clear  natural  science  from  the  re- 
proach  of   having   "  destructive   tendencies."     This   en- 
lightened science,  which  knows  only  of  a  natural  revela- 
tion and  has  its  religion  or  form  of  faith  in  the  unity  of 
God  and  Nature  should  — 

2.  Not  act  destructively  upon  the  prevailing  religion 
which  is  based  on  a  supernatural  or  unnatural  revelation. 
This  unnatural  religion,  forsooth,  possesses  a  true  essence 
which  is  also  recognized  by  the  natural  or  scientific  re- 
ligion.    This  is  the  common  cause  of  all  things. 

Very  well,  the  old  belief  has  the  common  cause  of  all 
that  is  in  a  personal  God  who  is  supernaturally,  in- 
describably, inconceivably  a  spirit  or  a  mystery.  The 
new  religion  a  la  Haeckel  believes  to  possess  in  Nature  — 
also  named  God  —  a  common  cause  of  all  things,  and  so 
the  two  forms  of  faith  possess  a  common  cause.  The 
difference  only  is  that  the  cause,  recognised  by  natural 
science,  is  the  every-day  Nature  which,  of  course,  is 
mysterious  enough,  yet  its  mysteries,  its  riddles  are  only 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    325 

such  as  natural  science  is  engaged  in  solving.  The  sort 
of  Nature  which  Haeckel  transforms  into  a  God,  which 
he  deifies,  is  also  a  mystery,  but  only  a  natural,  an  every- 
day mystery,  whilst  the  supernaturally  revealed  God  is, 
according  to  all  that  is  said  of  him,  of  a  nature  thor- 
oughly inexpressible,  undefinable  by  any  words  at  our 
command.  Or,  since  one  cannot  help  treating  the  good 
religious  God  with  human  words,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand how  in  such  process  all  these  names  and  words 
lose  their  human  sense.  Just  put  the  religious  God  and 
the  natural  God  of  Haeckel  side  by  side:  both  of  them 
are  omnipotent ;  Nature  makes  everything  which  is  made, 
but  only  in  a  natural,  every-day  sense.  The  good  God 
in  Heavens,  too,  makes  everything,  but  not  naturally ; 
he  makes  it  unnaturally  in  a  sense  and  in  a  way  which 
does  not  even  admit  of  being  defined,  of  being  expressed. 
The  good  God,  forsooth,  is  a  spirit,  but  not  such  as 
dwells  in  old  castles,  nor  such  a  limited  one  as  man  has 
in  his  head,  but  a  spirit  like  no  spirit,  a  monster-spirit, 
a  monster-mind  whose  constitution  cannot  even  be  ex- 
pressed in  words. 

Before  we  pass  to  the  third  point  of  the  "  purest  form 
of  faith,"  we  must  consider  a  little  closer  the  two  already 
mentioned.  It  will  then  be  the  more  easy  to  dispose  of 
the  third  and  last  one  as  well  as  of  the  final  combination 
of  all  the  three  in  one. 

The  difference  between  the  every-day  natural  and 
the  unnatural,  between  the  physical  and  metaphysical 
revelation,  religion  or  divinity,  is  so  great  that  the  en- 
lightened view  of  Nature,  as  represented  by  Haeckel  the 
Darwinian,  would  have  been  justified  to  forego  the  old 
names  and  the  revealed  divine  religion  and  put  "  de- 
structively "  against  it  the  monistic  view  of  the  world. 
By  not  doing  that,  Darwinism  only  manifests  the  limi- 


326  PHILOSOPHICAL 

tation  of  its  theory  of  evolution.  In  so  far  as  it  want'> 
to  remain  monistic  it  ought  to  have  viewed  Nature  only 
physically,  not  metaphysically.  It  must  see  in  Nature 
the  primary  cause  of  all  things,  but  not  a  mysterious  one, 
that  is,  a  not  yet  explored,  but  never  an  inexphrable 
cause, — •  inexplorab'.e  in  the  metaphysical  sense. 

That  Haeckel,  however,  the  most  radical  representative 
of  natural  science  monism,  still  rides  that  dualistio  horse, 
is  proclaimed  openly  by  the  third  point  which  finds  the 
ultimate  cause  of  all  phenomena  "  with  the.  present  or- 
ganization of  our  brain  "  unknowable. 

What  is  knowable? 

The  whole  context  to  which  that  word  belongs  shows 
conclusively  that  our  monistic  scientist  is  still  in  the  mire 
of  metaphysics.  Nothing  in  the  world,  not  an  atom  of 
it,  is  to  be  known  out  and  out.  Everything  in  the  world 
is  inexhaustible  in  its  secrets,  no  less  than  it  is  imper- 
ishable and  indestructible  in  its  essence.  With  all  that, 
we  learn  every  day  more  and  more  to  know  the  things, 
and  learn  that  there  is  nothing  which  is  closed  to  our 
mind.  Just  as  the  human  mind  is  unlimited  in  the  dis- 
covery of  mysteries  and  problems,  so,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  inexhaustible  and  the  unknowable  yield  themselves 
readily  and  unreservedly  to  its  inquiries  and  its  attempts 
to  solve  them. 

It  is  due  to  the  "  old  belief  "  that  the  words,  the  speech, 
nave  acquired  a  double  meaning, —  a  natural,  relative  and 
common-sense  one,  and  a  transcendental,  metaphysical 
one.  The  reader  may  notice  the  double  effect  of  natural 
science  when  it  is  compromised  by  metaphysics ;  it  con- 
tains mysteries  and  propagates,  by  their  solution,  the 
conviction  that  what  was  formerly  a  mystery  becomes 
through  research  an  ordinary,  everyday  thing  in  the  chain 
of  interrelation.  Nature  is  full  of  mysteries  which  re- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    327 

veal  themselves  to  the  inquiring  mind  as  ordinary  prop- 
erties. Nature  is  inexhaustible  in  scientific  problems. 
We  sound  them  and  we  can  never  come  to  an  end  with 
this  sounding.  The  human  common-sense  is  quite  right 
when  it  finds  the  world  or  Nature  unfathomable,  but  it 
is  also  right  when  it  repudiates  all  metaphysical  unfath- 
omableness  of  the  world  as  transcendental  folly  and  su- 
perstition. We  shall  i>ever  finish  with  our  exploration 
of  Nature,  ?.nd  yet  the  more  natural  science  proceeds  in 
its  exploration  the  more  strikingly  patent  it  becomes 
that  it  need  not  at  all  fear  the  inexhaustible  mysteries, 
that  "  there  is  nothing  'tfhich  resists  it  "  (Hegel).  Hence 
it  follows  that  the  in  exhaustible  "  primary  cause  of  all 
things  "  is  being  pumped  daily  with  our  instrument  of 
knowledge  which  is  no  less  universal  or  infinite  in  its 
capacity  for  exploration  than  Nature  in  setting  problems. 

"With  the  present  organisation  of  our  brain!"  No 
doubt.  Our  brain  will  yet,  through  sexual  selection  and 
struggle  for  existence,  develop  enormously  and  probe 
more  and  more  the  natural  cause  of  things.  If  that 
phrase  is  meant  In  this  sense,  then  we  perfectly  agree. 
But  it  is  not  mejjnt  so  by  the  metaphysically  prejudiced 
Darwinian.  The  human  mind  is  supposed  to  be  too  small 
for  the  thorough  exploration  of  the  world,  in  order  that 
we  may  believe  in  a  monster-mind  and  not  combat  him 
"  destructively." 

Darwin  with  all  his  merits  was  an  exceedingly  modest 
man ;  he  was  content  with  a  special  branch  of  inquiry. 
Everybody  should  be  as  modest,  but  not  everybody  should 
limi*  himself  to  the  same  specialty.  Science  has  not  only 
to  investigate  the  morphology  of  plants  and  animals;  it 
has  to  deal  also  with  the  problem,  as  to  how  the  unknow- 
able changes  into  the  knowable,  and  must  not  exclude 
from  5t3  province  the  ultimate  cause  of  all  existence. 


328  PHILOSOPHICAL    ESSAYS 

Hegel  has  propounded  the  doctrine  of  evolution  on  a 
far  more  universal  scale  than  Darwin.  We  do  not  wish 
on  tliat  account  to  prefer  or  to  subordinate  the  one  to 
the  other,  but  merely  to  supplement  the  one  by  the  other. 
If  Darwin  teaches  us  that  amphibia  and  birds  are  not 
eternally  separated  classes,  but  emerge  from  one  another 
and  merge  into  one  another,  then  Hegel  teaches  us  that 
all  classes,  that  the  whole  world,  is  a  living  being  which 
has  nowhere  rigid  limits  so  that  even  the  knowable  and 
unknowable,  the  physical  and  metaphysical,  flow  into  one 
another,  and  the  absolutely  Inconceivable  is  a  thing  which 
belongs  not  to  the  monistic,  but  to  the  dualistic,  religious 
view  of  the  world. 

"  We  have  to  go  back  twenty-five  centuries,  to  the 
dawn  of  classical  antiquity  in  order  to  find  the  first  germs 
of  a  natural  philosophy,  that  pursued  with  a  clear  pur- 
pose Darwin's  object,  viz.,  to  find  the  natural  causes  of 
the  phenomena  of  Nature  and  thus  to  dissipate  the  belief 
in  supernatural  causes,  in  miracles.  It  was  the  founders 
of  Greek  philosophy  in  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries 
B.C.  who  laid  this  true  cornerstone  of  knowledge  and 
tried  to  discover  a  natural  common  cause  of  all  things  " 
(Haeckel,  I.e.). 

Now,  if  our  esteemed  naturalist  drops  this  "  natural  " 
cause  and  substitutes  a  mysterious  cause  which  is  so  won- 
derful that  we  cannot  possibly  know  anything  of  it,  he 
again  leaves  us  a  metaphysical  ultimate  cause  to  believe 
in,  which  brings  us  in  line  with  religion. —  Does  he  not 
thereby  play  false  to  the  common  aim  of  Darwin  and  his 
critical  natural  philosophy? 

According  to  our  monism  Nature  is  the  ultimate  cause 
of  all  things;  it  is  also  the  cause  of  our  faculty  of  cog- 
nition ;  yet  this  faculty,  according  to  Haeckel,  is  too  small 
to  know  the  ultimate  cause!  How  does  that  fit  in? 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    329 

Nature  is  recognised  as  the  ultimate  cause,  and  yet  it  is 
to  remain  unknowable ! 

The  fear  of  destructive  tendencies  has  taken  hold  of 
even  such  a  determined  evolutionist  as  Haeckel.  He  aban- 
dons his  own  theory  and  lands  in  the  belief  that  the  hu- 
man mind  must  content  itself  with  the  phenomenon  of 
Nature  and  is  unable  to  reach  the  true  essence  of  it.  The 
ultimate  cause  is,  according  to  our  naturalist,  an  object 
which  does  not  come  within  the  province  of  natural 
science. 

"  The  contentedness  in  receiving  and  the  parsimony  in 
giving  are  not  virtues  in  the  domain  of  science,"  says 
Hegel  in  the  preface  to  his  "  Phenomenology  of  the 
Mind."  He  goes  on  saying:  Those  who  merely  seek 
edification,  who  desire  to  envelop  in  a  mist  the  earthly 
manifold  richness  of  existence  and  of  thought,  and 
hanker  after  the  vague  enjoyment  of  this  indefinite  di- 
vinity, may  look  out  where  to  find  it;  they  will  easily 
discover  the  means  to  rave  about  it  and  to  put  on  mys- 
terious airs.  But  philosophy  must  take  care  not  to  wish 
to  become  edifying. 

Darwin's  aim  has  been  represented  by  his  most  ac- 
knowledged disciple  as  a  philosophic  one, —  to  find  out 
the  natural  causes  and  to  dispel  the  belief  in  supernatural 
intervention  and  miracles.  And  yet  the  wonderful  in- 
conceivableness  of  the  common  cause  of  all  things,  the 
wonderful  limitation  of  the  human  mind  must  still  re- 
main untouched  for  the  sake  of  edifying  conciliation ! 

Our  reproach  against  Haeckel,  the  Darwinian,  amounts 
to  this:  he  has  not  assimilated  the  results  of  two  and  a 
half  thousand  years  of  philosophic  evolution  and  there- 
fore, though  he  may,  perhaps,  know  very  well  the  nature 
of  "  the  present  organisation  of  our  brain,"  he  neverthe- 
less sadly  tacks  the  knowledge  of  the  process  of  cognition 


33O  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

which  is  a  thing  different  from  the  physiology  of  tin 
brain.  At  least,  so  much  do  the  above  quoted  passages 
show  that  Haeckel's  ideas  of  the  natural  and  unnatural, 
of  the  wonderful  and  knowable,  as  well  as  his  ideas  of 
the  natural  divinity  and  the  divine  nature  are  not  monis- 
tic, but  are  still  permeated  by  a  very  reactionary  dualism. 

As  to  the  pantheistic  professions  of  our  greatest  poets 
and  thinkers, —  professions  which  culminate  in  the  con- 
viction of  the  unity  of  God  and  Nature,  Hegel  has  left 
us  a  very  characteristic  doctrine.  According  to  it,  we 
not  only  know  the  unity  of  things,  but  also  their  differ- 
ence. A  poodle  and  a  bloodhound  are  both  dogs,  but 
this  unity  does  not  prevent  differences.  Nature  has  much 
likeness  to  God, —  it  rules  from  eternity  to  eternity.  As 
our  mind  is  its  instrument,  a  natural  instrument,  Nature 
knows  everything  that  there  is  to  be  known.  It  is  omnis- 
cient. Yet  natural  wisdom  is  sufficiently  different  from 
divine  wisdom  that  there  are  enough  scientific  reasons  for 
the  destructive  tendencies  to  do  away  entirely  with  God, 
religion  and  metaphysics, —  to  do  away  in  a  rational  man- 
ner so  far  as  they  can  be  done  away  with.  The  con- 
fused ideas  have  been  before  and  will  therefore  remain 
as  have-beens  in  all  eternity. 

The  Hegelian,  too,  assumes  towards  religion  an  atti- 
tude which  is  merely  scientific,  not  irreconcilable.  We 
readily  recognize  religion  as  a  natural  phenomenon  which 
in  its  time  and  under  special  circumstances  was  fully 
justified,  and,  like  all  phenomena,  like  wood  and  stone, 
carries  within  its  transient  shell  an  eternal  germ  of  truth. 
What  Hegel  has  failed  to  do,  or  done  imperfectly,  was 
supplemented  by  his  follower  Feuerbach.  He  brought 
that  germ  to  light  and  showed  that  burned  wood  does 
not  come  to  nothing,  but  turns  into  ashes  and  undergoes 
in  that  process  such  a  change  that  the  use  of  the  former 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    33! 

name  is  no  longer  permissible.  The  transformation  of 
wood  into  ashes  is  a  development;  likewise  religion  de- 
velops into  science.  And  when  the  Darwinian,  in  spite 
of  that  manifests  a  desire  to  leave  in  the  ultimate  cause 
of  all  things  something  undeveloped  and  undevelopable, 
something  mysterious  and  metaphysical  he  only  shows 
that  he  has  not  grasped  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in  its 
universality  and  that  the  great  Hegel  who  developed  the 
doctrine  of  cognition  is  for  him  a  "  dead  dog." 


Let  us  cast  a  cursory  glance  over  Darwin's  work.  His 
subject  matter  is  the  animal  in  general,  the  animality,  the 
animal  life  in  its  generic  sense.  Before  Darwin  we  only 
knew  living  individuals,  and  the  general  animal  was  a 
mere  abstraction.  Since  then,  however,  we  have  learned 
that  not  only  individuals,  but  also  the  general  animal,  is 
a  living  being.  The  animality  exists,  moves  and  changes, 
undergoes  a  historic  development,  is  a  widely  ramified 
organism.  Before  Darwin  the  ramifications  or  divisions 
of  the  animal  world  were  marked  off  by  zoologists  ac- 
cording to  a  fixed  system.  They  divided  it  into  classes, — 
fishes,  amphibia,  insects,  birds,  and  so  forth.  Darwin 
has  introduced  life  into  this  system.  He  showed  us  that 
animality  is  not  a  dead  abstract  entity,  but  is  a  moving 
process  of  which  our  knowledge  has  up  till  now  given 
us  but  a  scanty  picture.  And  if  the  old  knowledge  of 
the  animal  world  was  a  scanty  picture  and  the  new  one  is 
more  substantial,  more  complete  and  truthful,  then  the 
gain  from  it  by  our  knowledge  is  not  confined  to  the 
animal  world.  We  also  gain  at  the  same  time  an  insight 
into  our  faculty  of  cognition,  viz.,  that  the  latter  is  not  a 
supernatural  source  of  truth,  but  a  mirror-like  instru- 
ment which  reflects  the  things  of  the  world,  or  Nature. 


332  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

Darwin  was  the  negation  of  a  metaphysician.  With- 
out, perhaps,  knowing  it  or  wishing  it,  he  took  meta- 
physics, the  belief  in  the  miraculous,  by  the  throat;  he 
removed  in  zoology  the  unnatural  class-lines  and  gave  the 
edifying  belief  in  the  metaphysical,  wonderful  nature  of 
the  human  organ  of  cognition  a  blow  which  stuck,  and 
substantially  illuminated  philosophy,  the  critique  of  reason 
or  theory  of  cognition. 

If  not  Darwin  himself,  at  least,  his  follower  Haeckel 
told  us  that  his  master  was  a  glorious  fighter  against 
metaphysics.  This  is  the  ground  on  which  he  meets 
Hegel  and  all  philosophers  as  allies.  All  of  them  strove 
after  illumination, —  especially  the  illumination  of  the 
metaphysical  dimness,  though  they  themselves  were  la- 
boring more  or  less  under  it. 

Hegel  has  much  in  common  with  the  old  Heraclitus, 
nicknamed  "  the  Obscure."  Both  of  them  taught,  that 
the  things  of  the  world  do  not  stand  still,  but  flow,  that  is, 
develop,  and  both  of  them  deserve  being  nicknamed  "  the 
Obscure."  To  illuminate  a  little  Hegel's  obscurity  it  is 
necessary  to  pass  in  brief  review  the  development  of  phi- 
losophy. 

Science  began  its  career  more  as  philosophy  than  nat- 
ural science,  that  is,  it  lived  at  the  beginning  more  in 
metaphysical  speculation  than  in  real  Nature.  True, 
mankind  had  already  made  some  excursions  into  natural 
science  before,  just  as  our  most  modern  naturalists  some- 
times land  in  a  backward  philosophy ;  still  we  must  say 
in  all  truth  that  the  old  cultivators  of  science  were  phi- 
losophers while  the  modern  were  naturalists.  Now  at 
last  the  conciliation  is  near  at  hand,  or  even  already  con- 
cluded. Now  the  question  is  of  a  completely  systematic, 
natural  view  of  the  world  which  has  neither  before  nor 
behind  it  anything  supernatural,  "  edifying "  or  meta- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    333 

physical.  Since  the  days  of  the  Greek  colonies,  since 
Thales,  Democritus  and  Heraclitus,  Pythagoras,  Socrates 
and  Plato,  philosophy  sought  to  solve  the  riddle  of  Na- 
ture. But  they  were  continually  in  doubt  and  in  the 
darkness  as  to  the  ways  and  means  of  inquiry,  whether 
the  solution  of  the  problem  was  to  be  sought  in  the  outer 
or  inner  world,  in  matter  or  in  mind.  And  in  modern 
times,  too,  when  after  a  thousand  years  of  darkness  a 
new  scientific  day  dawned,  and  the  philosophers  took  up 
again  the  work  of  the  old  predecessors, —  at  the  time  of 
Bacon,  Descartes  and  Leibnitz  —  the  dispute  about  the 
"  method  "  and  the  proper  "  organon  "  for  the  acquire- 
ment of  truth  was  still  going  on.  The  whole  thing  ap- 
peared doubtful, —  especially  the  nature  of  truth  wb;ch 
was  to  be  investigated  and  the  riddle  which  was  to  be 
solved,  whether  it  be  natural  or  supernatural, —  indeed, 
so  doubtful  that,  as  is  well  known,  Descartes  made 
Doubt  the  primary  condition  and  the  cardin?!  virtue  of 
inquiry. 

Yet  science  could  not  stop  at  that  point.  "5t  had  to  ar- 
rive at  Certainty, —  particularly  on  that  question  which 
for  Descartes  and  for  all  other  philosophers  was  the  most 
pressing.  It  needed  certainty  about  the  method,  that  is, 
how  one  must  proceed  in  the  inquiry  ;.n  order  to  arrive  at 
scientific  truth  which  is  identical  *v5th  certainty.  At  the 
same  time  natural  science  already  began  to  apply  practi- 
cally the  method  which  the  philosophers  were  still  search- 
ing for.  And  the  great  Descartes  was,  too,  partly  a 
scientist,  and  proceeded  in  philosophy  so  far  as  to  make 
the  above  mentioned  method  the  definite,  clearly-con- 
ceived subject  of  his  main  work. 

And  now  the  light  spreads  more  and  more.  The  meta- 
physical, the  inconceivable,  the  mysterious  has  to  go,  and 
must  be  driven  ov»t  of  science,  and  its  place  taken  up  by 


334  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

certainty,  by  the  undoubted.  The  process  is  in  full  swing. 
The  philosophers  develop  mightily  and  the  scientists 
render  them  mighty  assistance. 

And  here  comes  the  great  Kant  with  his  question: 
"  How  is  metaphysics  possible  as  a  science  ?  " 

Let  us  keep  in  mind  what  the  old  Konigsberg  phi- 
losopher means  by  "  metaphysics."  He  means  by  it  the 
miraculous,  the  mysterious,  the  inconceivable,  that  is'  the 
traditional,  theological  subject-matters:  "  God,  Freedom, 
Immortality." 

You  have  been  talking  about  it  a  pretty  long  time,  says 
Kant.  I  will  now  try  and  see  whether  it  is  really  pos- 
sible to  know  anything  about  the  matter.  And  he  takes 
as  his  model  Copernicus.  After  astronomy  had  for  a 
long  time  allowed  the  sun  to  move  round  the  earth  and 
not  much  came  out  of  it,  Copernicus  turned  the  method 
upside  down  and  attempted  to  see  whether  it  would  not 
be  better  when  the  sun  was  fixed  and  the  earth  moved 
round.  With  the  assistance  of  the  faculty  of  cognition 
Man  has,  up  to  the  time  of  Kant,  tried  to  probe  the  great 
metaphysical,  the  existence  of  the  world-miracle.  The 
famous  author  of  the  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  "  turns 
the  thing  round  and  takes  the  piece  of  Nature  which  man 
feels  glowing  in  his  head, —  the  lamp  of  illumination  of 
which  some  empirical  information  had  been  gained  be- 
fore—  and  attempts  to  find  out,  whether  with  this  lamp 
it  is  possible  to  illuminate  the  great  sea-serpent  which 
since  the  Christian  era  has  been  known  under  the  name 
of  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality,  but  in  classical  an- 
tiquity was  designated  by  its  wise  men  as  the  True,  the 
Good  and  the  Beautiful. 

This  classical  name  is  very  apt  to  mislead  us.  True, 
good  and  beautiful  specialties,  as  they  are  daily  cultivated 
by  the  exact  sciences,  must  clearly  be  distinguished  from 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    335 

the  great  sea-serpent  which  floated  before  the  eyes  of  the 
ancients  when  they  investigated  the  abstract  ideas.  The 
Christian  name  with  which  Kant  designates  the  meta- 
physical monster  is  in  the  present  stage  of  the  problem 
better  calculated  to  bring  out  the  difference  between 
physics  and  metaphysics,  between  the  perceptible  Nature 
and  the  senseless  Beyond. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  also  apt  to  miss  the  true  im- 
portance of  the  sea-serpent,  if  we  concentrate  our  atten- 
tion exclusively  on  its  religious  color.  Its  belly  is  yellow 
and  glitters  with  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality;  but  its 
back  takes  the  color  of  its  environment  and  by  this 
mimicry  it  is  able,  like  the  white  hare  in  the  snow,  to 
escape  our  eye.  When,  however,  we  come  nearer  and 
inspect  the  thing  closely,  we  find  on  its  grey  back  the 
words  "  The  True,  the  Good,  the  Beautiful  "  imprinted  in 
Greek  letters  of  a  dark  hue.  If  we  resume'  in  one  word 
the  inscriptions  which  the  philosophical-theological- 
metaphysical  sea-serpent  bears  on  its  back,  the  beast  will, 
perhaps,  be  most  aptly  characterized  by  the  beautiful 
name,  "  Truth."  The  double  meaning  of  this  word  ought 
not  to  be  missed.  The  sea-serpent-truth  is  transcen- 
dental. Still  it  rests  on  a  natural  basis,  on  the  basis  of 
natural  truth,  which,  of  course,  must  be  distinguished 
from  the  transcendental  one.  The  natural  truth  is  the 
scientific  truth ;  it  is  not  to  be  gazed  at  either  with  en- 
thusiasm or  with  "  edification,"  but  it  must  be  contem- 
plated soberly,  and  it  is  so  general  that  all  things,  even 
the  paving  stones,  belong  to  it.  The  sea-serpent-truth 
is  a  human  delusion  of  the  childish  prehistoric  times ;  the 
sober  truth  is  a  collective  name  which  embraces  in  one 
conception  both  true  fancies  and  true  paving  stones. 

Kant  asked :  How  is  metaphysics,  that  is,  the  belief  in 
the  supernatural,  possible  as  a  science?  And  he  replied. 


336  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

This  belief  is  not  scientific.  After  having  examined  the 
intellect  in  its  various  faculties  Kant  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  human  mind  can  only  form  images  of 
the  phenomena  of  Nature  and  as  far  as  science  goes,  does 
not  know  and  does  not  wish  to  know  of  any  other  "  true  " 
spirit.  Though  the  time  for  such  a  radical  pronounce- 
ment was  not  ripe  yet,  nevertheless  it  is  well  known  that 
Kant  concludes  his  inquiry  with  the  statement  that 
Reason  —  meaning  thereby  the  highest  measure  of  our 
intellectual  efforts  —  can  only  understand  the  mere 
appearances  of  things. 

The  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  the  sea-serpent  has  in 
the  hands  of  the  philosopher  Kant  changed  into  the 
scientific  and  sober  question,  what  sort  of  a  light  is  it  and 
what  is  it  to  illuminate.  Still  Kant,  too,  was  unable  to 
extricate  himself  from  the  muddle,  whether  he  should 
combat  the  metaphysical  monster,  or  criticize  Reason, 
or  do  the  two  things  at  the  same  time.  His  successors, 
Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  had  to  take  up  the  same 
work  and  continue  it.  By  the  inquiry  into  the  human 
mind  the  head  of  the  sea-serpent  is  to  be  crushed, —  that 
is  certain,  so  much  had  the  road  been  cleared  by  the 
Konigsberg  Copernicus.  Still  we  must  not  allow  our- 
selves to  be  carried  away  by  the  enthusiasm  for  his 
heroic  deed  to  such  an  extent  as  to  ignore  the  fact  that 
neither  he  nor  his  followers  have  completely  purged 
their  emotions  from  the  wretched  metaphysics,  from  the 
belief  in  a  higher  truth  than  the  natural  one.  They 
rather  guess  at  the  monstrous  than  perceive  it,  and  they 
onlv  gain  their  victory  step  by  step. 

Kant  argues  as  follows :  Even  if  our  Reason  be 
limited  to  the  knowledge  of  natural  appearances,  even 
if  we  could  not  know  anything  beyond  that,  we  still 
must  believe  in  something  mysterious,  higher,  meta- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    337 

physical.  There  must  be  something  behind  the  appear- 
ances, "  since  where  there  are  appearances  there  must 
be  something  which  appears."  So  concludes  Kant, — 
only  seemingly  a  correct  conclusion.  Is  it  not  enough 
that  natural  appearances  appear?  Why  should  there  be 
anything  else  behind  them, —  something  transcendental, 
inconceivable — but  their  own  nature?  However,  let 
that  pass.  Kant  expelled  —  at  least  formally  —  meta- 
physics from  scientific  pursuits  and  relegated  it  to  the 
province  of  belief. 

That  was  in  the  eyes  of  the  successors  and  especially 
of  Hegel  too  little.  The  belief  which  Kant  had  left,  of 
the  limited  mind,  the  limits  which  he  had  set  to  scientific 
inquiry,  were  to  this  giant  of  thought  too  narrow;  he 
soared  into  the  Universe  and  there  "  there  should  be  noth- 
ing to  resist  him."  He  wants  to  escape  from  the  meta- 
physical prison  into  the  fresh  physical  air;  and  this  is 
not  to  be  understood  in  the  sense  as  if  Hegel  himself 
were  mentally  free  and  wanted  to  assist  others  to  gain 
such  freedom.  No,  the  philosopher  himself  is  prejudiced 
and  wants  to  be  instructed.  His  mind,  his  flame  is  but  a 
portion  of  the  universal  light  which  glows  in  every  man, 
which  wants  to,  and  can  illuminate  everything,  but  can 
only  proceed  step  by  step. 

In  consequence  of  the  more  or  less  entangled  nature 
of  things  our  discussion,  too,  cannot  be  free  from  en- 
tanglement. We  wish  to  elucidate  the  connection  between 
the  old  philosophers  and  their  "  last  knight,"  then  between 
Hegel,  Darwin  and  the  whole  science.  Hence  our  epi- 
sodical excursions  in  various  directions. 

In  order  to  elucidate  the  teaching  of  Hegel  in  relation 
to  that  of  Darwin  it  is  necessary  above  all  to  keep  in 
mind  the  bewildering  double  nature  of  all  science. 
Every  scientist  —  and  Darwin,  too  —  illuminates  not  only 


338  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

his  special  subject-matter  on  which  he  is  consciously 
engaged ;  but  his  special  contributions  at  the  same  time 
inevitably  assist  in  illuminating  the  relation  of  human 
mind  to  the  world  as  a  whole.  This  relation  originally 
was  a  slavish,  religious,  non-human  one.  The  human 
mind  considered  itself  and  the  world  as  a  riddle  which  it 
was  unable  to  illuminate  with  the  light  of  his  knowledge, 
but  which  could  only  form  fantastical  imaginings  of  the 
overpowering  metaphysical  thing.  Every  contribution 
which  has  been  made  to  science  since  the  beginning  of 
human  history  has  weakened  the  slave  chain  in  which  our 
race  was  born.  Both  the  philosophers  and  the  scientists 
were  fettered  by  it,  and  the  emancipating  work  was  done 
conjointly  and  has  proceeded  vigorously  to  this  very 
day.  The  scientists,  however,  have  no  reason  to  look 
down  upon  their  colleagues,  the  philosophers.  They,  the 
scientists,  with  Darwin  at  their  head,  look  straight  in 
the  face  of  their  selected  special  subject-matter,  and 
squint  at  the  same  time  at  the  general  riddle,  the  riddle  of 
the  Universe.  Even  when  Darwin  declares  explicitly  that 
science  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  sea-serpent  and  thus 
clears  it  out  of  his  way  or  relegates  it  a  la  Kant  to  the 
province  of  belief,  these  are  merely  subjective  limitations 
or  anxieties  which  may  be  pardonable  as  far  as  the  in- 
dividual is  concerned,  but  must  not  fetter  the  universal 
research  of  the  human  race.  Now,  there  cannot  be 
knowledge  here  and  belief  there ;  it  is  the  solution  of  all 
doubt  that  is  required,  and  whosoever's  doctrine  is  op- 
posed to  such  a  demand  will  be  rejected  by  posterity  as  a 
piece  of  cowardice. 

It  was  said  before  that  the  scientists  boldly  contem- 
plate their  specialties  while  they  squint  at  the  monstrous 
miracle-world.  We  may  now  add  that  the  philosophers 
let  the  rays  of  their  intellectual  light  fall  direct  upon  the 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY     339 

great  sea-serpent  and  get  thereby  so  dizzy  that  they 
squint  back  at  their  own  light  as  something  meta- 
physical. The  confusion  which  arises  from  the  be- 
wildering double  nature  of  knowledge  is  now  overcome 
by  the  discovery  that  the  human  mind,  or  the  light  which 
illuminates  the  things,  is  of  the  same  nature,  of  the  same 
kind  as  the  objects  which  are  illuminated  and  that  is  the 
result  of  ages  of  philosophic  thinking. 

Kant  left  to  posterity  the  excessively  humble  opinion 
that  the  light  of  cognition  of  his  race  is  far  too  small  to 
illuminate  the  great,  wonderful  beast.  By  showing  that 
it  is  not  too  small,  that  our  light  is  neither  smaller  nor 
larger,  neither  more  wonderful  nor  less,  than  the  object 
which  has  to  be  illuminated,  the  belief  in  miracles,  in  the 
sea-serpent,  i.  e.,  metaphysics,  is  at  once  done  away  with. 
Simultaneously  man  loses  his  excessive  humbleness;  and 
it  was  our  Hegel  who  substantially  contributed  to  that 
result. 

A  thorough  perception  of  the  situation  requires  the 
historical  reconstruction  of  philosophic  development,  piece 
by  piece  in  all  the  details.  Still,  we  may  in  this  respect, 
too,  content  ourselves  with  a  brief  sketch,  since  general 
education  is  now  so  widely  spread,  that  the  interested 
reader  can  easily  supply  himself  the  fitting  illustrations 
to  the  picture  presented  here. 

The  labors  of  Darwin  and  Hegel,  however  differing 
in  other  respects,  have  this  much  in  common  that  both  of 
them  combat  the  metaphysical,  the  non-perceptible  and 
the  nonsensical.  While  proposing  to  explain  both  the 
difference  and  community  of  the  two  thinkers  we  can- 
not help  drawing  within  the  province  of  our  investiga- 
tion the  great  sea-serpent.  The  sport,  however,  is  ren- 
dered difficult  by  the  numerous  names  which  in  the  course 
of  History  have  become  attached  to  the  monster.  What 


34°  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

is  metaphysics  ?  According  to  the  name  it  is  a  branch  of 
study, —  or  rather,  it  was,  and  now  it  casts  its  shadow  on 
the  present.  What  is  it  after?  What  does  it  want?  Of 
course,  enlightenment!  But  on  what  subject?  On  the 
subject  of  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality.  This  sounds 
nowadays  quite  parson-like.  And  even  if  we  should 
characterize  its  subject-matter  by  the  classical  names 
of  the  True,  the  Good  and  the  Beautiful,  there  is  still 
enough  occasion  left  to  make  it  clear,  both  to  ourselves 
and  to  the  reader,  what  it  is  for  which  the  metaphysi- 
cians are  looking?  Without  this  it  is  impossible  to 
measure  and  to  explain  what  Darwin  or  Hegel  accom- 
plished or  left  undone  and  what,  in  consequence,  there  is 
still  left  for  posterity  to  accomplish. 

The  sea-serpent  cannot  be  at  all  characterized  by  an  apt 
name  since  it  has  so  many.  Its  origin  goes  back  to  the 
childhood  of  the  human  race,  and  the  comparative  phi- 
lology is  agreed  upon  the  point  that  in  those  prehistoric 
times  the  things  had  many  names  and  the  names  denoted 
many  things,  and  this  resulted  in  a  great  confusion 
which  in  modern  times  has  been  investigated  and  recog- 
nised as  the  source  of  mythology. 

One  has  only  to  see  what,  for  instance,  Max  Miiller 
has  to  say  on  that  point  in  his  "  Chips  from  a  German 
Workshop."  We  are  told  there  that  the  heathen  and 
Christian  fables  about  God,  etc.,  were  no  empty  non- 
sense, but  natural  developments  of  the  store  of  speech. 
It  was  the  poetical  predilections  of  the  ancient  peoples 
that  found  vent  in  the  language.  Sober  as  we  have  be- 
come by  now  we  still  use  such  expressions  as  that  of 
"  killing  time."  Such  pictures,  full  of  sense  and  in- 
telligence, served  the  ancients,  inclined  as  they  were  to 
poetry  and  transcendentalism,  for  the  rilling  out  of  the 
metaphysical  wonder-world.  Names  are  and  have  al- 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    34! 

ways  been  images  of  things.  Those  who  forget  this 
simple  fact  and  ascribe  to  words  a  transcendental  sense, 
are  engaged  in  metaphysics.  The  latter  is  the  general 
idea  underlying  all  fables.  The  poet  is  a  conscious  fable- 
spinner,  fables  are  unconscious  poetry.  Hence  it  follows 
that  when  we  speak  of  the  wonder-world  it  all  depends 
on  the  consciousness  with  which  we  accompany  our 
words.  Everything  which  exists  is  heavenly,  divine,  in- 
describable, inconceivable  if  we  only  mean  to  give  there- 
by vent  to  our  overpowering  emotions  caused  by  the 
natural  wonderfulness  of  Nature.  But  nobody  may  in  a 
sober  manner  express  himself  to  the  effect  that  every- 
thing which  exists  is  a  sea-serpent  and  is  bound  up 
with  the  unnatural  truth  or  with  something  which  the 
metaphysical  enthusiast  calls  God,  Freedom  and  Im- 
mortality. 

It  was  not  to  overcome  poetry,  but  to  overcome  the  un- 
conscious, exaggerated  poetry  that  constituted  the  object 
of  the  movement  for  human  enlightenment  in  which  all 
workers  of  science  have  participated,  partly  deliberately, 
partly  against  their  will. 


V. 

THE  LIGHT  OF  COGNITION. 

Where  is  light  to  be  got  from  ?  Moses  brought  it  down 
from  Mount  Sinai ;  but  after  his  people  had  been  praying 
for  more  than  three  thousand  years :  Thou  shalt  not 
steal,  they  steal  like  ravens  to  this  very  day.  That  means 
that  the  Revelation  proved  futile.  Then  came  the 
philosophers  and  wanted  to  extract  light  from  the  inner- 
most of  their  heads,  a  'priori  knowledge  as  they  call  it. 
But  what  had  been  established  by  one  to-day  was  upset 
by  the  other  the  next  day.  Natural  science  chose  a 
third  path,  the  inductive  path,  and  drew  its  wisdom 
from  observation.  This  discipline  has  finally  obtained 
true,  real,  durable  knowledge  which  is  accepted  by  every- 
body and  is  not  disputed  —  and  cannot  be  disputed  by 
anybody.  Hence  it  clearly  and  unmistakably  follows  that 
we  must  seek  enlightment  along  the  road  entered  upon 
by  natural  science. 

Still  there  are  a  good  number  of  people  —  even  among 
the  "  higher "  circles  and  equipped  with  the  best  of 
knowledge,  who  declare  themselves  not  satisfied  with  this 
light.  They  speak  of  the  metaphysical  craving,  they  build 
up  a  literature  of  their  own  and  try  incessantly  to  prove 
that  all  interpretation  and  knowledge  of  natural  science, 
however  fertile  in  individual  branches,  is,  on  the  whole, 
inadequate.  "  The  nature  of  matter,"  they  say,  "  is  in 
the  last  resort  inconceivable ;  all  mechanical  interpretation 
of  Nature  refers  only  to  changes  of  the  enigmatic  sub- 

342 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN   OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    343 

stance  and  leaves  our  craving  for  causation  in  the  last 
instance  unsatisfied." 

Julius  Frauenstadt  says :  "  The  need  for  metaphysics 
has  been  compared  by  Schopenhauer  to  the  need  of  a 
man  for  further  information  when  finding  himself  in  a 
totally  unknown  company  whose  members  are  introduc- 
ing themselves  to  him  one  after  another  as  friends  and 
uncles.  Where  the  deuce  do  I  come  to  such  a  company 
of  friends?  This  is  the  specifically  philosophical  ques- 
tion. Where  natural  science  ends,  there  philosophy  be- 
gins." ..."  Though  the  subject  of  both  is  the 
same,"  says  Frauenstadt  further,  "  the  whole  world,  the 
Cosmos, —  nevertheless  natural  science  studies  its  subject 
from  the  point  of  view  of  its  law-determined  manifesta- 
tion, whilst  philosophy  studies  it  in  its  inner  essence." 
Only,  thus,  we  must  at  once  add,  such  philosophical  con- 
templation has  not  borne  any  fruit  and  has  not  dis- 
covered anything  of  the  inner  essence  of  Nature. 

Nature,  as  is  known,  gives  us  only  phenomena,  trans- 
formations. Everything  flows,  everything  is  in  the 
making,  in  emerging  and  submerging.  The  philosophers, 
however,  want  something  substantial,  essential,  what 
Diihring  calls  "  unchangeable  truths."  As  nothing  of 
this  kind  can  be  found,  the  majority  have  desisted  from 
further  searching  and  turned,  after  the  example  of  Kant, 
from  philosophy  to  "  critical  philosophy,"  that  is,  they 
shift  the  blame  for  not  finding  the  substantial,  un- 
changeable spectre,  on  to  the  wretchedness  of  our  faculty 
of  cognition  which,  being  incapable  of  anything  higher, 
creeps  about  the  treasures  which  rust  and  moths  destroy. 

And  thus,  as  thousands  of  years  ago,  we  hang  be- 
tween heaven  and  earth.  Many  have  succeeded  in  ex- 
tricating themselves  from  that  position;  but  only  in 
practice.  Since  religion  and  metaphysics  could  not  yield 


344  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

anything  positive,  the  materialists  of  the  old  school  con- 
tent themselves  with  jumping  over  the  supernatural 
snares  and  tricks  and  passing  over  to  the  scientific  order 
of  the  day.  Stiebeling  says :  "  A  bridge  can  only  be 
built  from  that  bank  where  natural  science  has  pitched 
its  camp.  It  will  be  a  pontoon-bridge.  All  new  facts, 
observations  and  discoveries  will  be  joined  one  with  the 
other  in  a  regular  order  till  they  reach  the  other  bank 
lying  in  the  misty  distance.  It  is  only  then  and  not  be- 
fore that  the  true  system  will  be  arrived  at." 

But  now  other  competent  scientists  come  and  show 
that  this  method  not  only  postpones  the  solution  of  the 
problem  to  a  far  too  distant  future,  but  has  really  no 
prospect  of  success  whatsoever:  all  pontoons  which 
natural  science  successively  joins  bring  us  no  nearer  to 
the  opposite  bank.  "  And  even,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  if 
one  were  to  visit  all  the  planets  of  all  the  fixed  stars,  one 
would  not  proceed  a  single  step  in  metaphysics."  And 
not  only  the  older  generation  of  philosophers  speaks  thus, 
but  more  or  less  modern  scientists.  Dubois-Reymond 
speaks  about  the  "limits  of  cognition  of  Nature,"  and 
shows  that  there  are  natural  things  which  we  cannot 
reach  with  our  cognition,  conception,  interpretation,  etc. 
In  the  271  volume  of  the  "  Collection  of  Popular  Lec- 
tures "  by  Virchow  and  Holzendorf,  a  Dr.  Topfer  de- 
clares :  "  We,  of  course,  know  that  with  the  assumption 
of  atoms  the  nature  of  matter  is  not  defined.  But  the 
scientist  does  not  consider  it  his  business  to  define  the 
nature  of  matter.  He  adheres  to  facts  and  humbly  ac- 
knowledges that  the  human  mind  has  limits  set  to  it 
which  it  can  never  overstep." 

One  could  quote  any  number  of  passages  from  con- 
temporary literature  stating  what  an  absolute  gulf  there 
is  between  ordinary  cognition  of  Nature  and  the  meta- 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE  DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY     345 

physical  craving.  This  means  that  the  confusion  on  the 
question :  Where  is  Light  to  be  got  from  ?  is  endless. 
But  a  truly  classical  piece  of  confusion  is  given  to  us  by 
F.  A.  Lange  in  his  "  History  of  Materialism."  Apart 
from  the  numerous  secondary  beauties  and  excellent  qual- 
ities of  the  work,  apart  also  from  the  democratic  kinship 
of  the  author  with  Social-Democracy, —  things  which  we 
gladly  acknowledge  —  the  philosophic  standpoint  of 
Lange  is  the  most  pitiful  exhibition  of  convulsive 
struggling  in  the  metaphysical  noose  that  has  ever  been 
seen.  Indeed,  it  is  precisely  that  continual  swinging  to 
and  fro  which  lends  the  work  its  chief  importance,  since 
though  no  problem  is  solved  and  nothing  is  decided,  it 
places  the  problem  in  such  a  clear  light  as  to  bring  the 
final  solution  unavoidably  near. 

And  now  come  opponents  like  Dr.  Gideon  Spieker 
("  On  the  relation  between  natural  science  and  phi- 
losophy ")  and  point  to  those  convulsions  and  abuse  their 
justified  criticism  in  order  to  discredit  with  Lange  at  the 
same  time  the  conception  of  materialism.  Thus,  not  only 
the  eternal,  the  metaphysical  craving,  but  the  real  need 
of  the  present  day  demands  that  we  should  advance  be- 
yond the  practical  materialists.  These  people  simply  dis- 
miss the  question  of  the  nature,  the  substance  and  the 
limits  of  cognition,  and  go  on  with  their  building  of  scien- 
tific pontoons,  not  seeing  or  not  wishing  to  see,  that  one 
may,  of  course,  be  carried  away  by  the  stream,  but  that 
it  is  impossible  to  arrive  at  the  opposite  bank,  where  the 
metaphysical  infatuation  dwells. 

Materialism,  which  has  learned  to  practice  the 
knowledge  and  interpretation  of  the  most  varied  scientific 
matters,  has  failed  up  till  now  to  explain  the  matter  of 
cognition,  and  therefore,  even  its  sympathetic  historian 
was  unable  to  gain  from  it  a  decisive  preponderance  over 


346  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

the  idealistic  ruins.  The  faculty  of  cognition  or  inter- 
pretation is  the  only  force  which  is  still  being  defied.  It 
is  of  the  world,  and  yet  must  not  be  worldly,  physical,  me- 
chanical. What,  then,  is  it  ?  Metaphysical !  And  none 
is  able  to  explain  what  that  means.  All  the  definitions 
which  we  get  are  negative.  The  metaphysical  is  not 
physical,  not  palpable,  not  conceivable.  What  else  can 
it  be  but  an  emotion  which  the  happy  idealists  carry  about 
with  them  without  knowing  where  it  is? 

Man  wants  to  know  everything,  and  yet  there  is  some- 
thing which  cannot  be  known,  or  explained,  or  con- 
ceived. Then  one  resigns  himself  to  one's  fate  and 
points  out  the  limitation  of  the  human  understanding. 
"  There  are  two  points,"  says  Lange,  "  where  the  human 
mind  fails.  We  are  not  able  to  understand  the  atoms  and 
we  cannot  explain  out  of  the  atoms  and  their  movement 
even  the  slightest  manifestation  of  consciousness.  .  .  . 
One  may  turn  and  twist  the  idea  of  matter  and  its  forces 
as  one  likes, —  one  invariably  reaches  a  residuum  which  is 
inconceivable.  .  .  .  Not  without  justification,  there- 
fore, Dubois-Reymond  ventured  to  assert  that  our  entire 
knowledge  of  Nature  is  in  reality  not  knowledge,  but  a 
substitute  of  an  interpretation.  .  .  .  This  is  the  point 
which  the  systematisers  and  apostles  of  a  mechanical  view 
of  the  world  pass  by  heedlessly, —  the  question  of  the 
limits  of  the  cognition  of  Nature."  (A.  Lange,  "  Ge- 
schichte  des  Materialismus,  2  vol.  p.  148-150.) 

This,  with  its  exact  reference  to  chapter  and  verse  was, 
properly  speaking,  superfluous,  since  the  phrase  is 
thoroughly  well  known.  It  is  not  only  Lange  who 
speaks  thus,  but  also  Jiirgen  Bona  Meyer  and  von  Sybel. 
Also  SchafBe  and  Samter  would  speak  in  a  similar  strain 
were  they  to  render  an  opinion.  In  fact,  the  whole  ruling 
world  speaks  thus, —  so  far  as  it  has  advanced  beyond  the 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    347 

Capucines.  The  Social-Democrats,  however,  were  known 
to  Lange  insufficiently, —  else  he  would  have  known  that 
in  regard  to  this  point,  too,  the  mechanical  view  of  the 
world  had  been  completed  by  them. 

The  reader  may  well  stop  and  consider  where  it  would 
lead  if  our  knowledge  and  cognition,  if  the  mental  in- 
strument which  during  the  last  few  centuries  has  been 
applied  with  so  much  success  by  science  should  be  a 
mere  "surrogate."  Where  is,  then,  the  honest  John? 
And  if  we  were  to  look  through  all  the  big  folios  of  phi- 
losophy, we  should  still  not  find  any  positive  answer  to  it, 
since  it  were  precisely  the  philosophers  who  have  so  far 
destroyed  the  belief  in  a  personal  ruler  of  heaven  and 
earth.  The  unphilosophical,  the  religious  world  really 
had  somewhere  in  excelds  a  true  fund  of  Reason  which 
had  lent  some  slight  breath  to  a  piece  of  dirty  clay. 
These  people  were,  therefore,  justified  in  distinguishing 
the  holy  mind  from  the  profane,  the  genuine  from  its 
surrogate.  But  how  can  such  distinctions  be  upheld  by 
those  who  had  left  the  great  spirit-in-chief  way  up  in 
the  clouds  to  the  ignorant  back-woodsmen,  passes  my 
comprehension. 

"  The  great  step  backwards,  made  by  Hegel,  as  com- 
pared with  Kant,"  says  Lange,  "  consists  in  that  he  en- 
tirely lost  the  idea  of  a  more  general  way  of  knowing 
things  than  the  human  one."  Thus  Lange  deplores  that 
Hegel  did  not  speculate  about  any  superhuman  knowl- 
edge, and  we  reply  to  it  by  saying  that  the  reactionary 
cry :  "  Back  to  Kant !  "  which  at  present  is  heard  every- 
where, arises  from  the  monstrous  tendency  to  put  back 
the  clock  of  science  and  to  subordinate  the  human 
knowledge  to  a  "  more  general  way  of  knowing."  One 
would  like  to  abolish  the  dominion  over  Nature  which 
mankind  has  so  far  won  and  to  get  for  the  old  bogey- 


348  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

man  the  crown  and  sceptre  out  of  the  lumber-room  to  re- 
establish the  reign  of  superstition.  The  philosophic  cur- 
rent of  our  time  is  a  conscious  or  unconscious  reaction 
against  the  visibly  growing  freedom  of  the  people. 

The  metaphysical  idea  of  the  "  limits  of  cognition," 
which  runs  through  all  the  chapters  of  Lange's  famous 
book  and  which  is  accepted  wholesale  by  the  learned  men 
of  the  age,  need  only  to  be  examined  a  little  closer  so 
far  as  its  contents  go  in  order  to  reveal  itself  immediately 
as  a  conglomerate  of  empty  phrases.  "  The  atoms  cannot 
be  understood,  nor  is  consciousness  to  be  explained."  But 
the  whole  world  consists  of  atoms  and  consciousness,  of 
matter  and  mind.  If  the  two  are  unintelligible,  then 
what  is  there  left  for  the  human  reason  to  understand  and 
to  explain  ?  Lange  is  right, —  properly  speaking,  nothing. 
Our  ideas  are  in  reality  not  ideas,  but  substitutes.  Per- 
haps, the  grey  beasts,  commonly  called  asses,  are  mere 
asinine  substitutes  and  the  genuine  asininity  is  to  be 
looked  for  among  the  higher  organized  creatures.  I  have 
already  characterized  elsewhere  philosophy  as  a  science 
which  seeks  a  cracked  and  crazy  sort  of  truth.  When 
one  starts  to  mistrust  the  language  and  charge  it  with 
giving  things  perverted  names,  then  it  is  a  sure  sign  that 
something  has  begun  to  crack.  Listen  to  the  following 
passage  from  the  "  History  of  Materialism  " :  "  Shall 
we  define  the  idea  of  the  true,  the  good,  the  real,  etc.,  in 
a  sense  that  we  call  that  true,  good  or  real  which  is  so  to 
mankind  or  shall  we  imagine  that  what  man  regards  as 
such  is  also  and  to  the  same  extent  valid  for  all  thinking 
beings  that  are  and  may  be  ?  " 

We  reply  to  this  definitely  and  simply:  As  truly  as 
that  is  true  folly  which  language  calls  folly,  so  it  is  a 
perversion  to  imagine  that  the  true,  good,  real  or  think- 
ing being  can  elsewhere  be  constituted  differently  from 


EXCURSIONS   INTO   THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    349 

the  one  which  our  language  terms  as  true,  good,  real  or 
thinking  being.  And  the  metaphysical  water,  too,  must 
be  thoroughly  wet,  since  what  is  not  wet  cannot  be  called 
water.  We  certainly  do  not  know  how  many  strange 
kinds  of  trees  may  yet  be  found  in  Central  Africa,  but  so 
much  we  do  know  with  the  apodictical  certainty  of  Kant 
that  the  boards  which  are  cut  out  of  trees,  may  the  latter 
grow  on  the  planet  Mars  or  Jupiter,  cannot  look,  cannot 
make  themselves  felt  to  the  touch,  cannot  taste  the  same 
as  beef.  The  reader  will  forgive  the  drastic  comparison, 
—  but  whenever  the  metaphysical  craving  begins  to  con- 
fuse the  language,  patience  comes  to  an  end. 

Our  experiences,  observations  or  "  phenomena "  are 
classified  by  our  faculty  of  cognition  and  by  our  lan- 
guage and  designated  by  names.  So  long  as  the  future 
changes  are  not  essential,  that  is,  so  long  as  the  move- 
ment of  Nature  keeps  within  the  limits  as  fixed  by  con- 
ception and  language,  everything  remains  as  before.  But 
if  and  as  soon  as  the  future  changes  overstep  those 
limits,  so  that  the  true,  the  good,  the  thinking  beings, 
boards  or  beef  or  knowledge  appear  substantially  dif- 
ferent, then  they  have  become  different  things  and  we  re- 
quire new  names  for  their  designation. 

The  light  of  knowledge  makes  man  the  master  of 
Nature.  With  its  assistance  he  is  able  to  produce  in  the 
summer  the  ice  of  winter  and  in  the  winter  the  fruits 
and  flowers  of  summer.  But  withal  the  mastery  over 
Nature  remains  limited.  Everything  that  is  possible  to 
do  is  only  possible  with  the  assistance  of  natural  forces 
and  given  material.  To  desire  to  rule  over  Nature  in  an 
unlimited  way  by  means  of  a  mere  "  let  there  be,"  can 
only  be  conceived  by  a  dreamer.  Just  as  children  and 
savages  wish  to  rule  unlimitedly,  so  do  our  childish  scien- 
tists wish  to  know  unlimitedly.  "  The  system  of  satisfy- 


35O  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

ing  oneself  with  the  given  world,"  says  Lange,  "  is  op- 
posed to  the  tendencies  of  unification  inherent  in  Reason, 
it  is  also  opposed  to  art,  poetry  and  religion,  which  are 
possessed  of  the  impulse  to  outrun  the  limits  of  experi- 
ence." Well,  art  and  poetry  are  known  as  fancies, 
though  beautiful  and  adorable  ones ;  and  if  religion  and 
the  metaphysical  impulse  do  not  wish  to  be  more  than  to 
subsist  and  to  belong  to  the  same  category,  no  reasonable 
man  will  object.  Man  is  quite  entitled  to  his  meta- 
physical impulse  to  outrun  all  limits  if  he  only  recognises 
that  it  is  not  a  scientific  impulse.  The  light  of  Reason 
has  certainly  its  limits,  the  same  as  everything  else,  like 
wood  and  straw,  like  mechanics  and  understanding, — 
that  is,  rational  limits  which  every  part  of  the  Universe 
must  have  if  it  does  not  want  to  be  a  piece  of  folly. 

As  man  can  do  everything,  so  can  he  know  everything 
—  within  rational  limits.  We  cannot  create  like  God  who 
made  the  world  out  of  nothing.  We  must  keep  to  the 
given,  to  the  forces  and  matter  extant  and  reckon  with 
their  properties.  To  direct  and  to  guide  them,  to  shape 
them  —  that  is  what  we  call  creating.  To  arrange  and  to 
order  the  existing  material,  to  generalise  or  to  classify, 
to  abstract  mathematical  formulas  from  the  natural  phe- 
nomena—  that  is  what  we  call  knowing,  understanding, 
explaining. 

Our  entire  mental  illumination  is  accordingly  a  formal 
procedure,  a  mechanical  process.  Just  as  in  technical 
production  the  natural  phenomena  are  bodily  transformed, 
ro  should  in  science  the  transformation  be  done  mentally. 
Just  as  production  leaves  the  exaggerated  craving  for 
creation  unsatisfied,  so  in  the  last  instance  science  or 
"  knowledge  of  Nature  "  leaves  the  exaggerated  craving 
for  causation  unsatisfied.  But  as  little  as  a  reasonable 
man  will  deplore  the  circumstance  that  we  need  material 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    3$I 

in  order  to  produce  and  that  out  of  nothing  and  of  pious 
wishes  nothing  can  be  made,  so  little  will  anybody  who 
has  grasped  the  nature  of  knowledge  wish  to  outrun  the 
limits  of  experience.  We  want  material  both  in  order  to 
know  and  to  explain  as  well  as  in  order  to  produce. 
Therefore  no  cognition  can  enlighten  us  as  to  where  the 
material  comes  from  or  begins.  That  is :  material  is  ante- 
cedent to  thought.  The  phenomenal  world  or  the  mate- 
rial is  the  primary  thing,  the  substance  which  has  neither 
a  beginning  nor  an  end,  nor  an  origin.  The  material 
exists  and  the  existence  is  material  (in  the  wider  sense 
of  the  word),  and  the  human  faculty  of  knowledge  or 
consciousness  is  a  part  of  that  material  existence,  which 
like  all  other  parts  can  only  exercise  a  definite,  limited 
function,  the  cognition  of  Nature. 

When  Schopenhauer  wanted  to  have  "  introduced  "  to 
him  the  "  whole  company,"  he  did  not  consider  that  the 
introduction  is  merely  a  ceremony  and  that  every  cere- 
mony of  introduction  presupposes  an  unknown  company. 
Just  as  "  introduction  "  can  only  take  place  in  the  world 
of  men,  so  is  cognition  only  possible  in  the  world  of  ex- 
perience. The  metaphysical  impulse  wishes  to  reverse 
that  order,  it  wants  to  proceed  with  its  knowledge  beyond 
the  nature  of  knowledge  —  to  leave  its  own  skin  or  to 
pull  itself  by  its  own  hair  out  of  the  mire,  like  Miinch- 
hausen.  It  is  only  those  whose  ears  still  resound  with 
the  eternal  music  of  religious  flutes  and  who  have,  there- 
fore, no  taste  for  the  vicissitudes  of  the  world,  that  can 
think  of  such  a  desperate  undertaking. 

Lange  has  aptly  remarked  that  the  relation  between 
names  and  things,  the  definitions  have  caused  the  phi- 
losophers an  immense  amount  of  trouble,  but  he  does  not 
notice  that  he  himself  is  continually  struggling  in  the 
same  noose.  Words  or  names  denote  always  a  whole 


352  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

genus  of  varieties.  Blacks  and  Whites,  Russians  and 
Turks,  Chinese  and  Laplanders  are  all  included  in  the 
name  of  men.  But  as  soon  as  a  variety  leaves  its  genus, 
as  soon  as  it  becomes  more  than  formally  different,  its 
genus-name  ceases.  That  is  why  no  thing  can  proceed 
beyond  its  general  nature,  beyond  its  definition.  Why 
should  it  be  otherwise  with  the  intellect  ?  Does  it,  or  does 
knowledge  no  longer  belong  to  the  phenomena,  to  the 
mundane  things?  It  is  only  where  there  are  two  worlds, 
one  a  perceptible  world  and  the  other  a  higher,  a  religious 
or  metaphysical  world,  that  one  can  believe  in  the  higher 
nature  or  origin  of  consciousness.  But  in  that  case  there 
is  no  reason  why  the  impulse  of  the  higher  nonsense 
should  be  limited  at  all.  Why  should  not  tin,  board  and 
beef  also  be  deified,  along  with  cognition?  It  is  the 
business  of  Socialists  to  show  that  also  the  last  and  the 
most  subtle  metaphysical  residuum  of  "  something 
higher "  is  only  fit,  together  with  the  most  antiquated 
ridiculous  superstition,  for  the  lumber-room. 


The  world  offers  nothing  but  forms,  changes  or  trans- 
formations. Those  to  whom  that  is  not  sufficient,  should 
seek  the  eternal  beyond  the  stars,  as  religion  does,  or 
beyond  the  phenomena,  as  philosophy  does.  The  "criti- 
cal "  philosophers,  however,  have  faintly  felt  that  what 
is  thus  being  sought  is  a  crazy  notion  which  instruction 
has  to  remove  from  the  head  of  man.  They  have,  there- 
fore, given  up  the  inquiry  after  the  substance  and  turned 
their  attention  to  the  organ  of  inquiry,  to  the  faculty  of 
cognition.  There  they  have  worked  quite  critically.  If 
formerly  there  dwelt  something  higher  behind  every 
bush  and  tree,  it  has  now  —  at  least  in  authoritative 
circles  —  been  driven  to  its  last  privacy,  beyond  the  un- 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    353 

knowable  atoms,  beyond  the  still  less  knowable  con- 
sciousness. 

It  is  there  you  find  "  the  limits  of  cognition,"  and  there 
is  also  the  crazy  notion.  To  emancipate  oneself  from  it 
is  the  more  difficult  since  the  demands  of  the  working 
class  have  driven  our  official  scientists  to  pursue  a  con- 
servative, a  reactionary  policy.  Now  they  show  them- 
selves obdurate,  they  want  to  perpetuate  the  evil  and  go 
back  beyond  Kant.  The  late  Lange  might  have  landed  in 
this  company  through  error;  but  many  of  his  successors 
are  mere  scamps  who  use  the  words  of  their  prede- 
cessor as  a  good  weapon  against  the  new  generation 
and  thus  compel  us  to  carry  the  critique  of  Reason  right 
to  the  very  roots. 

Everything  that  one  perceives,  say  the  Neo-Kantians, 
can  only  be  perceived  through  the  spectacles  of  conscious- 
ness. Everything  which  we  see,  hear  or  feel,  must  come 
to  us  through  the  medium  of  sensation,  that  is,  through 
our  soul.  Consequently,  we  cannot  perceive  the  things 
in  their  purity,  in  their  complete  truth,  but  only  in  so  far 
as  they  appear  to  us  subjectively.  According  to  Lange, 
"  the  sensations  are  the  material  from  which  the  real 
eternal  world  is  being  built  up.  .  .  .  The  point  in 
question  can  easily  be  defined.  It  is,  to  the  successors  of 
Kant,  like  the  apple  in  the  original  sin,  viz.,  The  relation 
between  the  subject  and  the  object  in  cognition."  (Vol. 
n,  p.  98.) 

Thus  they  shift  their  own  sin  to  the  shoulders  of  the 
post-Kantian  philosophy.  Let  Lange  speak  for  himself: 
"  According  to  Kant,  he  says,  our  knowledge  originates 
in  the  interaction  of  the  two  (subject  and  object), —  a 
proposition  infinitely  simple,  and  yet  invariably  misin- 
terpreted. It  follows  from  this  view  that  our  phenomenal 
world  is  not  merely  the  product  of  our  conception,  but  a 


354  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

result  of  objective  actions  and  their  subjective  forma- 
tion. It  is  therefore  not  what  an  individual  may  perceive 
thus  or  otherwise  according  to  his  accidental  mood  or 
faulty  organisation,  but  what  mankind  as  a  whole  must 
perceive  through  its  senses  and  Reason,  that  Kant  calls  in 
a  certain  sense  objective.  He  called  it  objective  in  so  far 
as  we  only  speak  of  our  experience;  but  it  is  transcen- 
dental, or  to  use  another  word,  false,  if  we  apply  such 
knowledge  to  things  in  themselves,  that  is,  to  things  which 
exist  absolutely,  independently  of  our  knowledge." 

Here  we  have  some  of  the  brew  stewed  over  again.  It 
wouFd  still  be  tasty  if  it  really  were  as  homemade  as  it 
is  apparently  being  served.  If  I  did  not  know  that  be- 
hind the  belief  in  transcendental  objects  there  is  hidden 
the  source  of  all  superstition  I  would  not  waste  much 
time  in  drawing  over-nice  distinctions  between  the  ordi- 
nary subjectivity  as  "  it  must  be  perceived  by  mankind 
through  its  senses  and  reason,"  and  the  higher  objectiv- 
ity of  "  things  in  themselves,"  I  would  simply  leave  "  the 
things  which  exist  independently  of  our  knowledge  "  till 
they  become  perceptible  to  it.  Now,  however,  when  I 
know  that  the  above  lines  conceal  the  desire  to  proceed 
beyond  the  ordinary  objects  in  order  to  arrive  at  the 
belief  in  transcendental  objects,  I  smell  distinctly  that 
this  brew  has  for  its  basis  the  old  distinction  between 
sacred  and  profane  truth.  At  the  back  of  the  phenomena 
of  the  world  there  is,  forsooth,  something  higher  or  mys- 
terious which  our  reason  is  too  small,  our  intellect  is  too 
low  to  grasp,  which  we  are  unable  to  know  even  "  for- 
mally," which,  therefore,  if  we  are  not  addicted  to  re- 
ligious belief,  we  must  crave  at  least  philosophically, 
transcendentally. 

Of  course,  the  materialists  have  failed  up  to  now  to 
take  account  of  the  subjective  element  of  knowledge  and 


EXCURSIONS   INTO  THE  DOMAIN   OF  EPISTEMOLOGY    355 

have  accepted  uncritically  the  perceptible  objects  as  cur- 
rent coin.  This  error,  forsooth,  is  now  mended. 

Let  us  take  the  world  as  it  is  according  to  Kant,  that 
is,  as  a  mixture  of  subject  and  object;  but  let  us  keep  to 
the  fact  that  the  whole  world  is  one  mixture,  i.  e.,  a  unity ; 
let  us  also  keep  to  the  fact  that  this  unity  is  dialectical, 
i.  e.,  such  as  is  made  up  of  its  opposite,  of  mixture  or 
manifoldness.  Well,  there  are  in  this  manifoldness  of  the 
world  things  such  as  wood,  stones,  trees,  clods  of  clay, 
etc.,  which  are  unquestionably  called  objects  —  I  say 
"  called  "  without  as  yet  stating  that  they  really  are  such. 
There  are  also  things  such  as  colors,  odors,  heat,  light, 
etc.,  the  objectivity  of  which  is  more  questionable.  Then 
there  are  others  which  recede  still  further,  such  as  pains 
in  the  stomach,  love  and  spring  sensations,  which  are 
decidedly  subjective.  Finally  there  are  things  still  more 
and  by  far  the  most  subjective  which  are  such  in  a  super- 
lative degree,  like  moods,  dreams,  hallucinations,  etc. 
Here  we  are  at  the  salient  point  of  the  whole  matter. 
Materialism  has  won  its  case  if  it  has  to  be  acknowl- 
edged that  dreaming,  though  called  subjective,  is  an 
actual,  real  thing.  We  are  then  ready  to  grant  our  crit- 
ical philosophers  that  wood  and  stones, —  in  short,  all 
things  which  are  decidedly  called  objects,  are  likewise 
perceived  through  the  senses  of  vision  and  touch,  that, 
consequently,  they  are  not  pure  objects,  but  subjective 
things.  We  readily  acknowledge  that  even  the  idea  of  a 
pure  object  or  "  thing  in  itself "  is  a  squint-eyed  idea 
which  sees  distortedly  into  another  week  of  another 
world. 

The  distinction  between  subject  and  object  is  a  relative 
one.  Both  are  of  the  same  kind.  They  are  two  forms  of 
one  being,  two  individuals  of  one  species.  The  subject 
of  all  predicates  is  called  the  natural  process,  actuality, 


356  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

empirical  reality  or  existence.  Who  is  there  to  deny 
that  his  accidental  mood  has  the  same  true  existence  as 
the  Mont  Blanc,  i.  e.,  the  quality  of  the  existence  of  the 
two  is  the  same,  though  the  existence  of  the  Mont  Blanc 
is  more  universally  accessible  than  that  of  the  mood  which 
only  exists  for  the  individual  consciousness.  It  is  enough 
that  it  is  and  that  it  belongs  with  all  existence  to  the 
same  category.  Whoever  wants  a  more  detailed  proof 
of  the  objective  existence  of  his  subjectivity  has  only  to 
turn  to  Descartes  who,  as  is  well  known,  ascribed  the 
most  solid  existence  to  cogito,  to  thinking,  to  conscious- 
ness. Idealism,  the  entire  modern  philosophy,  which 
makes  a  special  study  of  the  subject-matter  of  cognition, 
lives  and  moves  in  the  opinion  that  the  intellect  or  the 
conscious,  thinking  being  is  the  most  evident  of  all 
evidences.  "  Sense  of  Self,  self-consciousness,"  says 
Lazarus  in  his  "  Life  of  the  Soul," — "  that  most  difficult 
idea  for  physiologists,  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  for  every 
single  individual,  through  his  inner  experience,  the  most 
certain,  the  most  firm."  Well,  whether  it  is  through  the 
inner  or  external  experience,  it  is  sufficient  for  us,  if  it 
has  to  be  admitted  that  the  mind  is  an  object  of  ex- 
perience. 

"  The  unification-tendencies  of  our  Reason "  require 
from  the  theologians  and  philosophers  that  they  should 
recognise  "  something  higher  "  or  inconceivable.  The 
same  tendencies  require  from  us  that  we  should  con- 
ceive heaven  and  earth,  body  and  soul,  atoms  and  con- 
sciousness as  the  manifold  manifestations  of  one  entity, 
as  the  manifold  forms  of  one  species,  as  the  various  predi- 
cates of  one  subject.  The  obscure  inconceivableness  or 
the  inconceivable  obscurity  of  philosophy  finds  its  com- 
plete elucidation  in  the  linguistical  relationship  between 
the  subject  and  the  predicate.  The  philologists  have 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY     357 

long  since  emphasised  the  unity  of  mind  and  speech.  Of 
every  predicate  speech  makes  a  subject  and  vice  versa. 
The  color  is  attached  to  the  leaf,  that  means,  is  its  predi- 
cate, the  leaf  is  attached  to  the  tree,  the  tree  is  attached 
to  the  earth,  the  earth  to  the  sun,  the  sun,  to  the  world 
and  the  world  finally  is  the  last  entity  or  subject,  the  only 
substance  which  is  attached  to  itself  only,  is  no  longer  a 
predicate  and  has  no  thing  above  it.  That  which  in  the 
terminology  of  the  grammar  is  called  subject  and 
predicate  is  elsewhere  called  matter  and  form.  Stone  is 
a  matter;  basalt  or  flint  or  marble  are  forms.  But  the 
stone-matter,  too,  is  but  a  form  of  the  inorganic,  and 
the  latter  is  a  form  of  existence.  The  world  is  the  entity, 
the  matter,  the  "  thing  in  itself  " ;  in  relation  to  it  every- 
thing else,  thinking  or  knowing  included,  are  predicates, 
phenomena  or  subjectivities.  Thus  the  conceptions  of 
subject  and  predicate,  of  matter  and  form,  of  entity  and 
phenomenon  interchange  up  to  the  largest  and  down  to 
the  smallest.  Whatever  we  grasp  with  our  faculty  of 
cognition  we  grasp  as  part  of  a  whole  and  a  whole  part. 
The  understanding  of  this  dialectics  illuminates  and  ex- 
plains to  perfection  the  mystical  impulse  to  seek  the  truth 
beyond  the  outward  appearance,  that  is,  the  subject  be- 
hind every  predicate.  It  is  only  through  ignorance  of  the 
dialectical  working  of  the  mind  that  this  impulse  can 
proceed  so  far  as  to  crave  for  a  subject  outside  of  the 
predicates,  for  a  truth  outside  the  phenomenon.  A  crit- 
ical epistemology  must  recognise  the  instrument  of  ex- 
perience itself  as  experience,  in  consequence  of  which 
any  excursion  beyond  experience  cannot  even  be  dis- 
cussed. 

When  now  the  modern  philosophers  with  the  historian 
of  Materialism  at  their  head  come  to  us  and  say  that  the 
world  offers  but  phenomena  and  these  are  the  objects  of 


358  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

cognition  of  Nature  and  the  latter  has  only  to  do  with 
transformations,  and  desire  to  find  a  higher  knowledge, 
an  eternal,  essential  object,  then  it  is  clear  that  they  are 
either  knaves  or  fools  who  do  not  want  to  be  satisfied 
with  all  grains  of  sand  of  the  sand-heap,  but  look  be- 
hind all  the  grains  for  an  extra  sand-heap  without  grains. 
Those  who  have  to  such  an  extent  fallen  out  with  the  vale 
of  tears  of  our  phenomenal  world,  may  with  their  im- 
mortal soul  put  themselves  in  a  fiery  chariot  and  go  up 
to  Heaven.  But  those  who  wish  to  remain  in  this  world 
and  believe  in  the  salvation  of  the  scientific  knowledge 
of  Nature,  should  study  the  materialist  logic.  Here  it  is 
stated : 

1.  The  intellectual  kingdom  is  of  this  world  only. 

2.  The  process  which  we  call   cognition,  conception, 
interpretation  must  not  and  cannot  do  anything  else  but 
classify  in  genera  and  species  this  world  of  perceptible, 
interconnected  existence.     It  must  not  and  cannot  prac- 
tice anything  else  but  formal  cognition  of  Nature.  There 
is  no  other  cognition  than  that. 

But  here  comes  the  man  with  the  metaphysical  impulse 
who  is  not  satisfied  with  the  "  formal  cognition,"  and 
wants  to  know  in  a  different  way  which  cannot  at  all  be 
defined  by  him.  It  is  not  enough  for  him  to  classify  the 
experienced  phenomena  with  the  assistance  of  the  under- 
standing. What  natural  science  calls  science  is  to  him 
but  a  surrogate,  a  poor,  limited  knowledge.  He  strives 
after  an  unlimited  spiritualisation  so  that  the  things  shall 
be  resolved  into  pure  intellect.  Why  cannot  that  dear 
impulse  see  that  it  puts  forward  an  exaggerated  demand? 
The  world  does  not  proceed  from  the  spirit,  but  quite  the 
reverse.  Being  is  not  a  variety  of  intellect,  but  on  the 
contrary,  the  intellect  is  a  variety  of  the  empirical  ex- 
istence. Existence  is  the  absolute,  which  is  everywhere 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    359 

and  eternal ;  thinking  is  merely  a  special  and  limited  form 
of  it. 

If  the  philosopher  perverts  this  simple  fact,  then  it  is 
no  wonder  that  the  world  is  to  him  a  riddle.  After  hav- 
ing so  perverted  the  relation  between  thinking  and  being 
that  it  contradicts  reality,  he  naturally  has  to  rake  his 
brain  over  this  "  contradiction  of  thinking."  But  those 
who  regard  Reason  as  one  of  the  natural  things,  as  a 
phenomenon  among  and  along  with,  other  phenomena, 
will  not  require  over  and  above  "  formal  "  science  yet 
some  higher  foolish  sort  of  knowledge;  they  will  make 
the  essence  of  things  not  knowledge,  but  life,  the  em- 
pirical material  life  of  which  knowledge  constitutes  only 
a  part.  Science  or  knowledge  must  not  take  the  place 
of  life ;  life  must  not  and  cannot  dissolve  in  science,  since 
it  is  more  comprehensive.  That  is  why  no  single  thing 
can  be  exhaustively  mastered  by  knowledge  or  interpre- 
tation. No  single  thing  is  knowable  entirely,  a  cherry  no 
more  than  a  sensation.  Even  when  I  have  studied  the 
cherry  in  accordance  with  all  the  demands  of  science, 
botanically,  chemically,  biologically,  etc.,  I  only  know  it 
truthfully  after  I  have  gone  through  its  history,  after  I 
have  touched  it,  seen  it  and  swallowed  it.  The  reader 
must  understand  that  the  distinction  I  draw  here  between 
knowledge  and  true  knowledge  is  quite  different  from  that 
which  the  metaphysicians  draw.  We  may  very  well  distin- 
guish between  knowledge  separated  from  life,  such  as  is 
given  in  school,  and  the  living  knowledge  which  grows 
with  and  out  of  the  material  of  experience.  Science  pre- 
supposes life  and  is  conditioned  on  experience.  This  is 
what  may  be  called  rational.  And  if  one  seeks  the  rational 
in  a  different  way,  if  one  wishes  to  get  pure,  unconditioned 
knowledge,  then  he  may  just  as  well  look  out  for  square 
circles,  or  iron  wood,  or  other  similar  nonsense.  When- 


360  PHILOSOPHICAL   ESSAYS 

ever  a  person  wishes  to  proceed  beyond  the  natural  limits 
of  things  —  and  the  thing  termed  cognition  is  no  excep- 
tion—  he  proceeds  beyond  the  limits  of  language  and 
reason,  and  black  becomes  white  and  reason  unreasonable. 

The  wretched  philosophical  criticism  which  prevails  to- 
day represents  the  human  mind  as  a  poor  beggar  which 
can  only  explain  the  superficial  phenomena  of  things. 
True  knowledge  is  closed  to  it,  the  essence  of  things  is 
considered  inscrutable.  In  reply  to  that  we  may  ask 
whether  each  thing  has  its  special  essence,  whether  there 
is  an  endless  number  of  essences,  or  whether  the  whole 
world  is  but  one  single  unity.  Then  it  will  be  seen  that 
our  mind  possesses  the  faculty  to  connect  all  things,  to 
sum  up  all  parts  and  to  divide  all  sums.  All  the 
phenomena  are  constituted  by  the  intellect  as  an  entity, 
and  all  entities  are  recognised  by  it  as  phenomena  of  the 
great  general  entity  of  Nature.  The  contradiction  be- 
tween phenomena  and  entity  is  not  a  contradiction,  but  a 
logical  procedure,  a  dialectical  formality.  The  essence 
of  the  Universe  phenomena  and  its  phenomena  are 
essential. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  metaphysical  craving  or 
the  impulse  to  seek  an  entity  behind  every  phenomenon 
may  live  and  flourish  so  long  as  it  recognizes  the  "  formal 
cognition  of  Nature "  as  the  only  rational  practice  of 
science.  The  impulse  to  go  beyond  the  appearance 
towards  Truth  and  Essence  is  an  excellent  and  scientific 
impulse.  But  it  must  not  exaggerate;  it  must  know  its 
limits.  It  must  look  for  the  sublime  and  divine  amidst 
the  earthly  transiency ;  it  must  not  separate  its  truth  and 
essences  from  the  phenomenon ;  it  must  only  search  after 
subjective  objects,  after  relative  truth. 

On  that  the  old-  and  neo-Kantians  are  also  agreed ; 
we  only  disagree  with  the  melancholy  resignation,  with 


EXCURSIONS    INTO   THE   DOMAIN    OF   EPISTEMOLOGY    361 

the  sad  squint  at  a  higher  world  with  which  they  accom- 
pany their  teaching.  We  do  not  agree  that  the  "  limits 
of  cognition  "  should  again  become  limitless  by  sending 
belief  in  search  of  an  unlimited  Reason.  Their  reason 
says :  "  Where  there  are  phenomena,  there  must  also  be 
something  transcendental  which  appears."  And  our 
critique  says,  "  The  Something  which  appears  is  itself  a 
phenomenon,  the  subject  and  the  predicate  are  of  the 
same  species." 

With  the  light  of  cognition  man  illuminates  all  things 
of  the  world.  In  order  that  he  may  use  it  properly  and 
avoid  jugglery,  it  is  necessary  to  know  that  the  light  of 
cognition  is  a  thing  like  other  things.  Darwin's  theory 
of  the  origin  of  species,  which  shows  the  gradual  descent 
of  one  from  the  other,  must  also  be  applied  here.  The 
monistic  conception  of  the  world  of  the  naturalists  —  the 
latter  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word  —  is  insufficient. 
And  even  if  Haeckel  should  prove  the  "  Perigenesis  of 
the  Plastidule  "  up  to  the  hilt,  even  if  the  rise  of  the 
organisms  from  the  inorganic  should  be  demonstrated  in 
the  most  evident  manner,  there  will  still  remain  the  meta- 
physical loophole:  the  great  opposition  between  mind 
and  Nature.  It  is  only  through  the  dialectic-materialist 
theory  of  cognition  that  our  conception  becomes  monistic. 
As  soon  as  we  only  grasp  the  relation  between  subject 
and  predicate  in  general,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  our 
intellect  is  but  a  variety  of  form  of  the  empirical  reality. 
Materialism,  it  is  true,  has  long  since  put  forward  that 
cardinal  proposition,  but  it  has  remained  a  mere  asser- 
tion, a  mere  anticipation.  To  establish  it  on  a  sure  basis 
it  is  necessary  to  gain  the  general  conviction  that  science 
altogether  does  not  want  and  cannot  want  to  accomplish 
more  than  the  classification  of  the  perceptible  things  ac- 
cording to  species  and  varieties ;  its  entire  desire  and 


362  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

ability  is  confined  to  the  mental  reconstruction  of  the 
different  parts  of  a  differentiated  unity. 

No  doubt,  in  case  of  other  objects  not  much  is  said 
of  them  when  it  is  proved  that  something  belongs  to  the 
general  order  of  things.  One  wishes  to  know  something 
more  specific  than  that,  as  for  instance,  whether  it  is 
organic  or  inorganic,  whether  matter  or  force,  plant  or 
animal,  etc. :  that  it  is  natural,  is  here  beyond  dispute, 
but  in  the  case  of  the  mind,  which  for  thousands  of  years 
has  been  the  object  of  edification,  of  which  people  do  not 
know  how  transcendentally  they  should  extol  it,  a  great 
deal  is  said  when  it  is  stated  that  it  is  but  a  variety,  a 
form,  a  predicate  of  Nature,  that  it  must  be  such  since 
the  linguistic  unity  of  word  and  meaning  admit  of  but 
one  Nature.  Just  as  necessarily  as  water  is  wet  so  neces- 
sarily has  each  thing  which  has  a  nature  —  and  how  can 
one  conceive  of  anything  which  has  no  nature  of  some 
kind  —  the  very  same  natural  nature.  The  word  and 
its  meaning  allow  of  no  other  nature. 

The  savage  makes  a  fetish  of  the  sun,  the  moon  and 
other  things.  The  civilized  nations  have  made  a  God  of 
the  mind,  a  fetish  of  the  faculty  of  thinking.  This  must 
cease  in  the  new  society.  There  the  individuals  live  in 
dialectical  community :  the  many  in  unity ;  and  the  light 
of  cognition  will  also  have  to  moderate  itself  and  be 
content  with  being  a  force  among  other  forces,  a  tool 
among  other  tools.  At  the  same  time,  however,  it  must 
claim  that  it  is  truly  what  it  is.  Human  cognition  has 
no  cause  to  feel  that  disgracefully  humble  modesty  which 
the  Professors  Nageli  and  Virchow  wanted  to  ascribe  to 
it.  They  have  cunningly  spoken  of  the  limits  of  cog- 
nition, because  the  will-o'wisp  of  a  "  higher  "  unlimited 
cognition  has  been  playing  pranks  with  them  in  the 
metaphysical  darkness. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


*  OCT06 


- 


PRINTED  IN   U.S.A.  CAT.      NO.     24      161  (**f 


UC   IRVINE   LIBRARIES 


3   1970   01996  0696 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL 

r\s\  "'""""lll'l'lllllllllll    j 

000434886     8 


univt 

So 

L 


